A Few Thoughts On Issues Concerning Tankbusting Fish...

[cuticom]

I know most people wouldn't agree with me, but I think the best idea would be to put in place a licensing system, yes I know people will do some illegal things, but mainly it works. IE here in Australia, it's illegal to keep reptiles or amphibians (all amphibians apart from axolotls) without a license. The licenses cost money, and it does make someone think before they get a reptile, after all why would they bother paying for a license etc and still not research? it completely removes the problem of impulse buys, which is what generally lands people with potentially monster fish.

My belief is if you've bought an animal, whether or not you researched it;s up to you to make sure it has a good home, whether that means rehoming through advertisements in the local paper, contacting aquariums or zoos, it's still your job to rehome the animal. Considering the type of people in the LFS's I'm at, I would probably consider euthanasia before the idea of returning them to an LFS, because it doesn't deal with the problem, it just prolongs it. It's also GIVING the LFS money, and supporting the selling of these monster fish, because the more times people return them (and if given money at all, are given less then they paid) the more times the LFS make a profit.

 

[DiscusKeeper403]

Personally, I think tank busting fish shouldn't be sold. When I open up my store, if they have the right sized tank, and want me to special order them in, then I'm all for it!

 

[tetraqueen]

Well we could stop all fish in this hobby it is quite barbaric. We fly from all over the world something that may have been quite happy where it was with whatever or then again may just have been eaten or dead in the wild.


I think some lfs should not sell things to people who do not understand however my lfs has told me believe it or not that they return to the wild after being flown back. Do they just not survive if faced in waters with other pedators and teritory.

Tarca the otter springs to mind etc

I could not euthanaze but perhaps this could be another museum where specialist take on all these fish a bit like a horse santuary.

Would they get the sympathy vote. Then again would it take CFC to work in such a place sounds like he has monsters of the deep.

i like to see his sort of fish at a good distance and safe I could never handle them.

National Trust for fish I say.

 

[andywg]

The fish would basically turn around with difficulty, which is no quality of life considering how instinctively active RTC's get when they're hungry.

Hmm, I am less sure of that. It will take a fair old while for an RTC to get past 4 feet, and a 4 foot fish has quite a bit of room in a tank that is 15x6 foot.

Of course there are people who keep RTC properly, but even on MFK there aren't many of those.

Considering the proliferation of people keeping silver aros in 6x2x2 tanks and who love feeding goldfish to predators, I never consider MFK as a bastion of best practices for keeping fish.

Also, if you had a large enough tank, its not as simple as that- i know of a guy on the planetcatfish forum who maintained a 20x10x6ft RTC tank for 10years, he ended up giving it up because the maintainence of doing the gigantic water changes on such a tank once a week just became too much work as the years went by.
When you consider that RTC can live to over 25years old, i can't see many people wanting to look after the fish for that long even if they did have a large enough tank.

Water changes on a tank like that would be easy if you did some planning. That sort of a tank should just be plumbed in to an auto-constant-water changer. Always have a supply of fresh water coming in causing the levels to overflow a weir to a drain. Simple, no more water changes ever. After that, the only maintenance will be to feed the fish. Hardly the most taxing of things to do.

And anyway, you originally asked why it would be better to take the fish back to the lfs. The simple unrefuted answer is that there is a higher (though still very slim) chance of someone who can house the fish taking it from an lfs. Just because some people may have the tank and then decide they don't want it doesn't affect the simple mathematical fact that there is a greater chance of a decent life for the fish by returning it.

 

[tetraqueen]

Thanks So I did right by my plec at least i saw him alive if in a smaller tank but he will end up in a better place and I killed the rest of mine moving them.

I hope I get over this but it has taught me a lesson never to get big fish again.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The fish would basically turn around with difficulty, which is no quality of life considering how instinctively active RTC's get when they're hungry.

Hmm, I am less sure of that. It will take a fair old while for an RTC to get past 4 feet, and a 4 foot fish has quite a bit of room in a tank that is 15x6 foot.

RTC are some of the fastest growing catfish there are, i've seen some people who have had RTC which grew 2-3inches a month when juveniles.


I still think a 15x6ft long aquarium though is also simply too small for an RTC.


I'll put it this way- guppys grow to 2-2.5inches long maxium on average, if someone was keeping a guppy in a tank that was only 3-4inches wide and 7inches long and 3inches high (basically a tank that only holds 1litre of water), you would tell them that the tank is far too small to keep a guppy in yes? Scale-wise though, it wouldn't be much different than keeping an RTC in a 15x6ft long tank though.

Also, if you had a large enough tank, its not as simple as that- i know of a guy on the planetcatfish forum who maintained a 20x10x6ft RTC tank for 10years, he ended up giving it up because the maintainence of doing the gigantic water changes on such a tank once a week just became too much work as the years went by.
When you consider that RTC can live to over 25years old, i can't see many people wanting to look after the fish for that long even if they did have a large enough tank.

Water changes on a tank like that would be easy if you did some planning. That sort of a tank should just be plumbed in to an auto-constant-water changer. Always have a supply of fresh water coming in causing the levels to overflow a weir to a drain. Simple, no more water changes ever. After that, the only maintenance will be to feed the fish. Hardly the most taxing of things to do.

And anyway, you originally asked why it would be better to take the fish back to the lfs. The simple unrefuted answer is that there is a higher (though still very slim) chance of someone who can house the fish taking it from an lfs. Just because some people may have the tank and then decide they don't want it doesn't affect the simple mathematical fact that there is a greater chance of a decent life for the fish by returning it.

The time spent cleaning out the filtration and spending money on the water (a lot of people are charged for exactly the amount of water they use), even if you sorted out doing the water changes, it would still take a lot of time to keep the systems running and clean- not to mention the amount of time you would need to spend cleaning the pond/aquarium itself, keeping the bottom clean, prevent algae blooms, netting up heavy RTC turds etc.

RTC are a big commitment when it comes to fish keeping, everything needs to be done on a large scale and it all costs a lot of money, often many thousands of pounds or dollars.



If an RTC only had a 1% chance of finding a decent home if it was returned to a lfs to be re-sold, then i wouldn't rehome it and would rather just personally euthanise the fish, because there's a 99% chance that it won't find that good home and will just end up rotting in a tank far too small for it, which the fish doesn't deserve to be killed that way.

 

[andywg]

RTC are some of the fastest growing catfish there are, i've seen some people who have had RTC which grew 2-3inches a month when juveniles.


I still think a 15x6ft long aquarium though is also simply too small for an RTC.


I'll put it this way- guppys grow to 2-2.5inches long maxium on average, if someone was keeping a guppy in a tank that was only 3-4inches wide and 7inches long and 3inches high (basically a tank that only holds 1litre of water), you would tell them that the tank is far too small to keep a guppy in yes? Scale-wise though, it wouldn't be much different than keeping an RTC in a 15x6ft long tank though.

And I said a 15x6 tank is enough for an RTC where? I used that as an example of an lfs near me that has large tanks in its customers. It would, however, offer a decent life until at least 3 feet long.

The problem with the guppies is that that small tank has almost no stability, whereas the huge tank contains far more water. By using the same ratio of tank volumes to fish length, due to the way volume is calculated a doubling in length of the fish will give an 8 fold increase in volume (2 to the power of three).

Consider a tank 1 foot by 2 feet by 2 feet. This is a 4 cubic feet tank. One that is 2 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet is going to be 32 cubic feet. That is why the larger fish work ok in a tank that is comparatively smaller.

The time spent cleaning out the filtration and spending money on the water (a lot of people are charged for exactly the amount of water they use), even if you sorted out doing the water changes, it would still take a lot of time to keep the systems running and clean- not to mention the amount of time you would need to spend cleaning the pond/aquarium itself, keeping the bottom clean, prevent algae blooms, netting up heavy RTC turds etc.

All you would need to do is use a trickle tower where some filter wool will need washing out once a week under a showerhead. Maybe once every 2-5 years you should clean out the actual biological media in the tower. To minimise water changes you could grow hydroponics through sunlight and it would aid in preventing algae without massively relying on UV. Protein Skimmers could probably work as well so long as you designed big enough.

And time cleaning the pond? Only if you have loads of light for too much algae. And to get rid of the faeces problem you merely put a large waterflow across the bottom, thus forcing the faeces into the water column and through the filtration system.

If you are on a water meter system then obviously you aren't going to keep an RTC.

Larger systems offer far more ability to automate the system. As my tanks have got larger my maintenance has got much less.

RTC are a big commitment when it comes to fish keeping, everything needs to be done on a large scale and it all costs a lot of money, often many thousands of pounds or dollars.

And this is discounted where? My point is that you can easily make the tank close to self sufficient and if you have the money to set up a tank large enough, the upkeep is not actually too much at all.

If an RTC only had a 1% chance of finding a decent home if it was returned to a lfs to be re-sold, then i wouldn't rehome it and would rather just personally euthanise the fish, because there's a 99% chance that it won't find that good home and will just end up rotting in a tank far too small for it, which the fish doesn't deserve to be killed that way.

And who gave you the power to kill animals just because you don't like the odds? How do you know the fish will end up rotting in a tank far too small for it? That is a huge assumption to make. I prefer optimism and the 1% chance the fish will survive well, or be taken by someone who can get it in a public aquarium.

 

[OohFeeshy]

The problem with the guppies is that that small tank has almost no stability, whereas the huge tank contains far more water.

The point being made was actual space to move, not stability. Let's presume this hypothetical tank is hooked up to a jolly big sump. That is home to a gulper cat so no chance of playing around with the wording.

Nice as mathematics is, I think it's silly to apply it here. If there was really any chance of it getting a proper home then the internet wouldn't be flooded with please of 'I've got a 2ft RTCthat I can't house anymore, please help'. I believe the PFK article into tankbusters listed that out of the fairly large number of RTC offered to public aquaria, none were accepted. Very few public aquaria have FW sections worth mentioning, or at least, that could even potentially house an RTC.

Heres another spanner in the works (not suggesting it, simply mentioning it). Artificially stunting the fish in question? I know little research has been done into the exact causes, but assuming there is some way of doing it (eg, via hormones) withough the poor water quality, is this 'more' acceptable? After all, it would have a (fairly) good life, you could keep it all it's life, and it doesn't get killed.

 

[andywg]

The problem with the guppies is that that small tank has almost no stability, whereas the huge tank contains far more water.

The point being made was actual space to move, not stability. Let's presume this hypothetical tank is hooked up to a jolly big sump. That is home to a gulper cat so no chance of playing around with the wording.

The point being made by Toxis was just about tank size, not just movement, or else she wouldn't have emphasised the volume so much. The fact is a larger fish will be used to living in an area that is relatively smaller than a guppy, and even then you are dealing with cubing. The guppy is somewhere around one 18th the size of a 3 foot RTC. As the tank would need to be longer by a factor of 18 at each length, it would be 18x18x18 times larger, or 5,832 times more volumous. There is much more room to move in.

If your RTC tops out at 3 feet (and they do slow down in growth quite considerably by then) the 15x6 foot tank more than follows the rules we give for larger fish in the oddballs and catfish section for a v ery long time. Obviously not forever, but gives you a long time to get the next pen ready.

Nice as mathematics is, I think it's silly to apply it here. If there was really any chance of it getting a proper home then the internet wouldn't be flooded with please of 'I've got a 2ft RTCthat I can't house anymore, please help'. I believe the PFK article into tankbusters listed that out of the fairly large number of RTC offered to public aquaria, none were accepted. Very few public aquaria have FW sections worth mentioning, or at least, that could even potentially house an RTC.

But regardless, there is a greater chance of them getting housed through an lfs than if you just keep it and kill it. What is so wrong about optimism rather than killing a fish just because you can't house it and don't think anyone else can?

Heres another spanner in the works (not suggesting it, simply mentioning it). Artificially stunting the fish in question? I know little research has been done into the exact causes, but assuming there is some way of doing it (eg, via hormones) withough the poor water quality, is this 'more' acceptable? After all, it would have a (fairly) good life, you could keep it all it's life, and it doesn't get killed.

An interesting point. Raises ethical questions, as it answers others.

|Edit

Forgot to add that my lfs owner has been to a wholesaler where you walk on decking. When he looked between the wood he saw a shoal of RTC swimming past underneath him, so it is not as if nowhere has enough room for these things, this hoolding tank for them was absolutely huge, at a minimum 20x20 feet.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

If an RTC only had a 1% chance of finding a decent home if it was returned to a lfs to be re-sold, then i wouldn't rehome it and would rather just personally euthanise the fish, because there's a 99% chance that it won't find that good home and will just end up rotting in a tank far too small for it, which the fish doesn't deserve to be killed that way.

And who gave you the power to kill animals just because you don't like the odds? How do you know the fish will end up rotting in a tank far too small for it? That is a huge assumption to make. I prefer optimism and the 1% chance the fish will survive well, or be taken by someone who can get it in a public aquarium.

Who gave you the right to eat meat or keep animals in captivity?


I have the right to kill an animal just as much as i have the right to eat meat or keep an animal in captivity, just as much as anyone else does.

If you have a problem with someone killing an animal, then maybe you should go vegan and give up the fishkeeping hobby altogether.





Like Oohfeeshy said, public aquariums are already stuffed full of tankbusting fish like RTC and Irredescent sharks which have been rehomed from the general public to the public aquariums, there are far more RTC and other tankbusting fish sold than what there are public aquariums willing to take them in- even if the public aquariums have the space, they prefer to keep their attractions varied to keep the publics interest, you can have too many RTC etc.


Do you know a single person living in your area who has a tank/indoor pond measuring at least 16x8ft and wants an RTC?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The problem with the guppies is that that small tank has almost no stability, whereas the huge tank contains far more water.

The point being made was actual space to move, not stability. Let's presume this hypothetical tank is hooked up to a jolly big sump. That is home to a gulper cat so no chance of playing around with the wording.

The point being made by Toxis was just about tank size, not just movement, or else she wouldn't have emphasised the volume so much. The fact is a larger fish will be used to living in an area that is relatively smaller than a guppy, and even then you are dealing with cubing. The guppy is somewhere around one 18th the size of a 3 foot RTC. As the tank would need to be longer by a factor of 18 at each length, it would be 18x18x18 times larger, or 5,832 times more volumous. There is much more room to move in.

If your RTC tops out at 3 feet (and they do slow down in growth quite considerably by then) the 15x6 foot tank more than follows the rules we give for larger fish in the oddballs and catfish section for a v ery long time. Obviously not forever, but gives you a long time to get the next pen ready.

RTC will grow a lot larger than 3ft long, if an RTC tops out at 3ft then it means that its growth has been stunted. 4-5ft long is what they should reach in captivity, in the wild they can grow to 5-6ft long. I believe there's an RTC in an aquarium someone in Bristol or something like that, what i do know is this beast measures 5 and a half foot long, it was originally someones pet.



I'm no mathematicion (in fact i'm pretty poor at maths), but scale-wise a guppy living in a 1litre tank is no different than an RTC living in a 15x6ft tank or whatever. A fully grown RTC would have barely enough room to turn around in such a tank, and barely enough room to swim up and down, it would be like a goldfish in a bowl.

It is also difficult to stunt the growth of RTC if water quality and diet is good, most RTC just grow regardless of the size tank they are kept in, even to the point where they cannot physically turn around in the tank. I read a news story a while back on a university which had a big 8x2x2 tank with an RTC which was just over 2ft long in it, the RTC swam upright almost all the time because there was so little room to turn around in the tank- thankfully a public aquarium accepted the RTC though and it got a good home in the end.


With the tank that jack built, his tank is a 12x12x7ft tank, although a monster sized tank, it will be too small in the long term for some of his tankbusting fish, but despite this public aquariums have rehomed fish to him, which shows how desperate some public aquariums can be to get rid of tankbusting fish;

http/www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/...?article_id=586

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The time spent cleaning out the filtration and spending money on the water (a lot of people are charged for exactly the amount of water they use), even if you sorted out doing the water changes, it would still take a lot of time to keep the systems running and clean- not to mention the amount of time you would need to spend cleaning the pond/aquarium itself, keeping the bottom clean, prevent algae blooms, netting up heavy RTC turds etc.

All you would need to do is use a trickle tower where some filter wool will need washing out once a week under a showerhead. Maybe once every 2-5 years you should clean out the actual biological media in the tower. To minimise water changes you could grow hydroponics through sunlight and it would aid in preventing algae without massively relying on UV. Protein Skimmers could probably work as well so long as you designed big enough.

And time cleaning the pond? Only if you have loads of light for too much algae. And to get rid of the faeces problem you merely put a large waterflow across the bottom, thus forcing the faeces into the water column and through the filtration system.

If you are on a water meter system then obviously you aren't going to keep an RTC.

Larger systems offer far more ability to automate the system. As my tanks have got larger my maintenance has got much less.

RTC are a big commitment when it comes to fish keeping, everything needs to be done on a large scale and it all costs a lot of money, often many thousands of pounds or dollars.

And this is discounted where? My point is that you can easily make the tank close to self sufficient and if you have the money to set up a tank large enough, the upkeep is not actually too much at all.

If an RTC only had a 1% chance of finding a decent home if it was returned to a lfs to be re-sold, then i wouldn't rehome it and would rather just personally euthanise the fish, because there's a 99% chance that it won't find that good home and will just end up rotting in a tank far too small for it, which the fish doesn't deserve to be killed that way.

And who gave you the power to kill animals just because you don't like the odds? How do you know the fish will end up rotting in a tank far too small for it? That is a huge assumption to make. I prefer optimism and the 1% chance the fish will survive well, or be taken by someone who can get it in a public aquarium.

Trust me, i have done a lot of research into keeping RTC as i would like to keep one or two myself in the future if i can find the space to do an indoor pond large enough, and trust me, it does take thousands of pounds to get the system in place- the liner alone for a pond large enough for an RTC would cost around £1000's (add at least another £800's if you get underlay fabric too for the liner), same goes for the filtration, then you have the extra costs to sort out the plumbing, electrics and building of the pond, water-proofing the room (large indoor ponds create an insane amount of evaporation).

And that doesn't even include the decor- £5 peices of bogwood and rocks will be swallowed whole by an RTC, you need to have decor that isn't going to be shifted by a fish which will grow to 4-5ft and is very strong, such decor will cost hundreds of pounds of you buy it, and thats not even mentioning a substrate if you want to have one.


As far as i am aware, i don't think you can use protein skimmers on freshwater tanks.
Trickle filters need to be cleaned out an aweful lot more often than once every 2-5years, i have read about them in koi magazines, they offer good biological filtration, but are not great on mechanical filtration, and do not create a strong water current either, which is very important for RTC tanks, so overal they wouldn't be a good filter to rely on completely- not to mention they don't look very attractive and have to suspended over the waters surface.

RTC tanks need to be heavily over-filtered, they produce bigger and more poops than koi do, and as far as fishkeeping goes, koi are very heavy waste producers.

It is generally true that the larger the tank, the more stable the water quality, but it depends on what type of fish you are keeping in the tank. Predatory fish tend to foul water quality a lot easier due to their diet, and when an adult RTC decides to barf up its last meal or do a load of turds, it would be comparable to a smal adult human being vomiting in the tank or doing a turd in it i.e. it would create a lot of ammonia and organcic waste, which would mess up the water quality and ph of the tank very easily.


It is also untrue that "only if you have loads of light you will have lots of algae"- ever heard of Brown Algae? That comes about because of a lack of light.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

And I said a 15x6 tank is enough for an RTC where? I used that as an example of an lfs near me that has large tanks in its customers. It would, however, offer a decent life until at least 3 feet long.

You said this early on in the thread;

Pure maths would indicate that returning the fish to the lfs gives it a slightly better chance at a decent life. I know that a customer of one of my lfs has a tank over 6 feet in width (forget the length but 15 feet sits in my mind for some reason). So there is a chance, albeit slim.

Because we were talking about rehoming RTC via lfs to suitable size tanks, you said in the above quote "there is a chance" i.e. with the above example of the tank being adequate, which is just as good as saying that the tank is good enough- you mentioned nothing about the tank only being good for an RTC to the 3ft long point in your original post.
And even then, such a tank wouldn't be large enough in the long term.
In fact, you then said;

I think a 4-5 foot fish can turn around in a 6 foot tank front to back, unless the fish grows somehow while turning.

Which would back up my assumption that you thought the tank would be adequate, as otherwise why would you try to prove such a point?

How else did you expect these quotes to be interperated considering the context in which you said them?

 

[SJ2K]

Mmmmmmmmm fresh fish

http/forums.waterwolves.com/how-to-cook-...sh-t103806.html

That actually looks really tasty .


I'm a member of a monster fish forum, i've read a lot of stories of people who end up stuck with arapaima's (i believe they grow to over 9-10ft long), end up killing and barbequeing them- apparently they taste very good .

I've only ever known of one person to house an arapaima properly, and that guy had a 50,000gallon aquarium (no kidding! I've seen the picture diary of the making of it and everything), and i certainly don't expect many people to do that, so IMHO i think its totally acceptable to kill and eat such fish .

Can we have a link? Id love to see that!

 

[CFC]

If you have a good pre filter before the water reaches your biological media there really isnt any need to clean more than once every two or three years to remove a bit of the bio film that develops and the only reason you do that is to prevent tunneling by the water where the water will find the path of least resistance and bypass the majority of the media, the pre filter collects all the solids and can be jet washed under a tap to get it clean again.

There are freshwater protein skimmers but they require huge ammounts of pressure to work and are not suitable for conventional freshwater aquaria, but on jumbo scale tanks and ponds they are of great use, they work on a venturi principle by forcing air into a high pressure stream of water.

The key to predatory tanks is masses of surface area over the filter media, sponges are next to useless and high tech media designed for koi ponds is the order of the day with a large ammount of flow over the media.