Damselfish into discus

[babblefish1960]

Hi all, I thought I would try this theory one more time, but in a different vein.

I have always been fascinated by Marine fish, they are so colourful; and frankly, a lot of them behave more like mammals than fish by caring for their young to a point. Albeit, there are an even greater number of ocean fish that eat everything in sight including their own fry. Heck there are even more still who have a spawn and just leave them to figure things out on their own, stingrays come to mind as do Pacific Salmon.

Cichlids in particular make up a most fascinating group of fish species, very adapted to their environment and clearly adaptable, as evidenced by their ability to thrive in the home aquarium. They just about cover the earth, well the watery bits on the major land masses at least. They are not very large, though they do have a very wide range of sizes, all the way from the tiny Tanganyikan shell dwellers to the lumbering Oscars of South America.

They are cute, they're personable, they have such character and exhibit a willingness to interact with us for care and food. They're intelligent, well they don't write books as such, but we can certainly write books about their behaviour and quirks. They also possess amazing colours on occasion, though the blue ones tend to be iridescent rather than coloured.

But for me, the most amazing part of cichlids has got to be the care and attention that they give to their babies, fry, young whatever you wish to call their progeny. It is here that cichlids absolutely outshine all other freshwater fish, and to some extent, even their marine cousins. They spawn with some very particular methods, some do the entire process, including the rearing, in their mouths. Some use shells and caves and leaf litter to hide away their brood until such time as they can care for themselves. And still others, feed the little blighters from their very own slime coat and swim guardedly about with fry hovering close by on their sides, switching from parent to parent until they are able to eat other things in the water.

The observation here is the fact that these fish of the vast cichlid family don't behave very fish-like when it comes to their babies.

I have postulated a theory before, but at the risk of a repeat performance, suffice it to say, that I feel strongly that cichlids didn't start life out way back before television and cars, as freshwater fish.  No matter what you may believe in or not believe in, my suggestion is that it is a plausible theory that the ubiquitous cichlid family began as the intelligent and more colourful marine reef fishes.

I have no proof, and I don't have to, that is the beauty of a theory, I can guess all I want, so there.

So the theory that I have that is my theory and mine alone, is that the world, for whatever reason, was suddenly covered in lots of water, so deep that it covered all of the major land masses as we know them, and in the span of time that this may have been the case, all the marine fish of the huge oceans swam all over the place. As we all know, reef fish don't live deep in the water, and in order to survive they would continue to climb to the rising surface of the ocean, thereby giving them the opportunity to be above all the land all over the world.

Then, and I'm using assumptions here of miraculous and gargantuan proportions, as the water levels receded, however this was accomplished, I'll assume the creation of the polar ice caps, these little shallow water fish (in oceanic scale) found themselves being stranded throughout the world in various pockets of landlocked mini seas.  They developed, by what I like to call "environmental evolution", and through this, became the worldwide distribution of similar fishes with marine habits and colours.

When you look at coldwater fishes in Canada, they are all drab in colouration and not very thoughtful about their young, so that seems to address the scarcity of cichlids represented here; they were warm water reef fishes that couldn't survive the cold.

Now before anyone goes off half-cocked on some crusade to tell me I'm nuts, we all know that already, but I happen to love this theory, it gives me comfort about how cichlids are so unique in the fish world, why they are so diverse, yet so much the same, and why of course, they are so colourful and have such huge opinions of themselves. I have had differences of opinions with Oscars who thought themselves better landscapers than me, and decided they liked the rocks in different places, and eventually thought the rocks were best outside the tank through the glass; perhaps they thought the room itself needed some rocks.  Thank goodness for the bathtub, it makes a usable emergency shelter for just such an event (it's a good place to hide from the fish).

Now anyone can say as they please about this, let's talk about the uniqueness of cichlids, and their peculiar habits, and your theories.

[mseguin]

I'm pretty sure the current theory about cichlids is that they did indeed originate from saltwater fish that migrated to freshwater.

[darkdep]

I've watched the "Jewels of the Rift" video many times and they mention the fact that Tanganyika is very "ocean like" in many ways; but according to that video, Tanganyika has never been connected to the sea (the Rift Lakes are many millions of years old, but not Hundreds of Millions of years old)...

I've always found it interesting that there are "Cichlids" on different continents though

[babblefish1960]

Okay, okay, maybe I'll cede that it isn't actually all my theory all my own, maybe, just maybe, someone else thought the very same thought that I thought after I thought this thought first.

I have always been of the belief that the evolutionary process over infinite eons was too cumbersome, and to quote  a really very smart person I know verbatim, he has great thoughts too, as follows: "I've always thought that microevolution is far more indicative of a large amount of diversity becoming reduced throguh geographic isolation, etc, rather than slow slow mutations.
The theory makes sense on many levels."

It is a comfort to know that the world of science and great thinkers are finally beginning to see that my theories have merit.(I have gazillions of theories, just ask me some time! )