There is currently a major drought in the Amazon, and it is very, very bad. Millions, probably billions of dead fish, dried up tributaries, and the lower Rio-Negro, the world’s largest freshwater river is so low you can walk across it. Given that the rivers are the major form of transport in the Amazon basin, large areas are now cut off from the outside world. And given all the dried up stream and small rivers, there may have been species extinctions.

This is important for the fishkeeping hobby because a surprising number of fishes are still wild-caught from the Amazon, including such popular fish as Cardinal Tetras. This is not the only major recent drought. There was another large drought in 2005 described as a once in a century drought, and repeated droughts of this nature can hardly help but cause damage to the forest and its fish.

Given the predicted effects of climate change on the Amazon I was expecting something like this to happen. This year’s drought is probably partly caused by El Nino, but previous El Ninos didn’t cause this much devastation, and I blame the difference on climate change. See my previous post on the subject. However, I wasn’t expecting it this soon. There is more detail on the 2010 drought in this article by Heiko Bleher in Practical Fishkeeping: The Greatest Amazon River disaster in history.

Given the major problems aquarium fish in the Amazon are facing, you may wish to avoid buying wild-caught Amazonian fishes for the next year or so, unless you intend to breed them and have the skills to do so.