Debate

[stang1]

Quite an interesting debate!
I believe the responsibility lies both with the lfs and the customer. As an lfs worker, I hate that people think we are all there to earn money and make quick sales. I take my job incredibly seriously as do my colleagues and I wish more stores were like it.
I spend as long as it takes with a customer and also explain about the different fish. Luckily, many people take the advice but sadly, some people ignore everything you tell them. It can come across as very patronising to customers, even though we don't intend to but I'd rather the fish go to a good home than worry about the pound signs flashing.
A lot of first time fishkeepers love the fact that their "first" fish will breed and we do explain how often they give birth, how many fry they produce etc. They are welcome to bring any fry back but many either leave them to help stock their tank or come to realise that fry are "food" to the other fish.

 

[WILDER]

Good on you stang1 its nice to see that some lfs do try to be responsible sellors.

 

[FeroX]

Yeah, we all should try to be, I do too, I don't sell people certain fish if the circumstances aren't right and I always explain about every fish if they ask...I always give them other options too if I see what they'd like won't line up and explain why etc....

Maybe it's different in the UK (it's illegal isn't it?) but here in Canada people seem to love the whole live feed thing, so you grow accustomed to it.

 

[Colin_T]

We used to sell live gambusia as feeder fish. They are considered a pest species and as such most people where happy to feed them off. Unfortunately the government stepped in and made them a noxious species and now no one is allowed to keep or sell them. So instead of thousands being collected and fed off each week, they are all left out in the wild to do what they want. How stupid is that.

 

[emmsy]

Wow, alot of input here. I think the general feeling is that raising feeder fish by experienced fish keeping is fairly acceptable. Noobies however look at fry with tender and loving eyes, almost as if it is their own offspring.

Emma

 

[shelaghfishface]

just summed me up their emma!!

shelagh xxxx

 

[emmsy]

just summed me up their emma!!

shelagh xxxx

I had you in mind when I was writing it Shelagh

Emma

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

While I'm of the opinion that any animal taken into your home deserves to be well taken care of, I'm not opposed to the culling of fry or the use of feeders when the situation demands it. Simply put...fish cannot be spayed or neutered like some other pets, nor are all fish species easily sexed. In the case of "accidents" nature should be allowed to take it's course, and surviving fry of quality can then be raised for the purpose of sale. "Saving" fish of poor quality only allows them the opportunity to breed and weaken future gene pools.

Personally I'd prefer people breed their own feeders in situations that feeders are necessary, because pet shop feeders are notorious for being at a higher risk for carrying disease or parasites. I am not however in favor of those who over-use feeders in unnecessary situations because most "feeder" fish are very poor in nutritional value.

 

[emmsy]

Thanks for your input mate, a true and valid opinion.

 

[shroob]

Just to try and clear things up for me, are we on about the situation of accidental births, where a fish has babies that wern't planned, or the process of raising fish eg. guppies/cons for the sole use of using their young for feeders?

If its the first situation where the owner finds themselves with potentially hundreds of fish they can't cope with, I think the first scenario is that they try and rehome them, if though they cannot find homes for them all I think it is best to cull them, as someone who posted before me said that they would likely end up suffering in the long run. This culling could be by feeding them to bigger fish, or other methods such as clove oil.

The other situation where a person is breeding fish for the sole use of feeding their young to another fish is iffy with me. I can understand and accept why people do it, but I don't think I could drop a fish into a tank knowing it has no chance of survival. Its not the the opportunity hasn't appeared to me, I have dozens of guppies and some predatory fish, its just that its the type of death that the fish would suffer. I don't think anyone knows for sure how long it would take a guppy to die if it was eaten, swallowed whole. I'm going to take the oscar as an example here, if I drop a guppy into the oscar, it would probably be crushed to death, so really the death would be pretty quick I would imagine (please if I'm wrong correct me, as I'm still trying to get my head round this). Now with my other fish, hujeta, they pretty much swallow things whole and I can't see them crushing anything, so the guppy would go down alive and probably die very slowly and painfully.
I don't subscribe to the 'its nature' arguement, theres nothing natural about keeping a fish in 4 glass walls, then putting something in with no chance of escape. The same with a 'clean source of food', raising your own feeders will certianly be healthier than store bought ones, but if you're only doing for a disease free food, then kill the feeders first humanely, knock them on the head so they die quickly (I'm aware it might be difficult for little fish, but its just a pain free death) then feed them to your fish.

For me it all boils down to a humane death. If the fish dies quickly then it sits better with me, but if a fish is made to suffer then I think its wrong (if this is in the stomach of another fish, or relentlessly being chased around for prolongued periods of time - even the issue of feeders much too big for their predators). Sorry if I went off topic, but thats just what I think.

EDIT: Just remembered the whole debate on if fish feel pain, well for my money they do. I guess thats why I don't like the idea of painful deaths. If it comes out that they can't feel pain then that situation may change, but until then I stick with my views.

 

[Helen G]

It may sound a bit callous, but I didn't get fish as pets, I got them so I can have my own little slice of nature in my living room, (Though I will point out that I love them very much, enough to spend £12 on a £2 fish!!) I am trying to recreate conditions that the fish would encounter in the wild, and if that means one of my fry becomes lunch for a predatory fish, then so be it, we have to remember that this is life for any animal. I don't like it happening all that much, but that is what happens, and we have to accept it (it's like when watching animal planet and the lion closes in on the little baby zebra and then........ )

Humans should not interfere with nature. (thats my POV)

 

[andywg]

This brings us back to the question about feeding live goldfish, is it right or is it wrong? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, just opinions.

Not quite. Check out the pin by nmonks on feeding live fish in the pred section. Goldfish are a horrendous staple diet for predatory fish and shouldn't be fed often, if at all. This is not from an ethical point of view, but from a nutritional point of view.

 

[shroob]

It may sound a bit callous, but I didn't get fish as pets, I got them so I can have my own little slice of nature in my living room, (Though I will point out that I love them very much, enough to spend £12 on a £2 fish!!) I am trying to recreate conditions that the fish would encounter in the wild, and if that means one of my fry becomes lunch for a predatory fish, then so be it, we have to remember that this is life for any animal. I don't like it happening all that much, but that is what happens, and we have to accept it (it's like when watching animal planet and the lion closes in on the little baby zebra and then........ )

Humans should not interfere with nature. (thats my POV)

But thats the point I'm trying to discredit, its nothing like nature, in nature the prey has a chance to live. In an aquarium the fish has no chance to escape. The only way feeding live fish can be called natural, is if it has a chance to escape. In nature a fish might eat another fish, but the other fish has a huge amount of water it can just swim away to.

The only real arguement I have accepted is that breeding your own feeders is more humane than buying frozen fish such as whitebait or lancefish. This might sound contradictory but after finding out how they are caught and how they are left to die suffocating on the decks of ships, some having ice poured over them it seems to me that home grown live feeders might be more humane (though if you kill them first, that would be even better).

Some people just like feeding other fish for their enjoyment, which I can understand, but its not for me.

 

[nicnak]

One day after i bought my 4 mollies home 2 of them had babies!!

It was exciting at first then the impications hit me

one month down the line and only 5 are left... but even so if they keep having babies every month i couldnt cope with this much.

naively enough i was under the impression that conditions had to be perfect for fish to breed

So my opinion is that although i wouldnt deliberatly breed fish for food i will just let nature take its course

 

[LauraFrog]

Not everything was meant to survive.

An elephant takes a step and six grasshoppers are crushed. A branch falls off a tree and eighteen insects are drowned. There is a rockslide and the burrows of three platypus are caved in. A big fish eats a little one. A disease is introduced into a cave and a whole flock of bats dies. A meteor hits the earth and there is a mass extinction of dinosaurs. A puddle dries up and the tadpoles in it suffocate.

I wasn't meant to survive. My mother had pre-eclampsia, which resulted in my delivery by emergency caesarean, six weeks early. My lungs collapsed when I was two days old. Without modern medical technology - and several hundred thousand dollars - both my mother and I would have died. But I survived anyway because somebody cared for me, and somebody cared for my mother, and somebody asked that the doctors do something.

For my fish I am that somebody. But I see my duty, as the provider of care for dependant animals that have no ability to run away as a cat or dog might, to be to provide for them the best life that I can, not to ensure they survive at all costs. I will sooner euthanise a fish I cannot treat than see it suffer - and I will sooner feed excess fry to a larger fish than let them suffer in a filthy, overcrowded tank.

When I started keeping livebearers, I bought no males. I understood that they would probably breed anyway because I did my research. But I thought, ten to twenty fry per female per month? No problem.
Wrong. Fifty to sixty fry per female per month, because I kept them in good conditions and fed them properly. My LFS is also unable to take fish that are less than an inch long. I quickly came to the realisation that I would be unable to cope with the hundreds of fry, not because I didn't want to but because of a lack of space.

I do use fry as feeders. I don't raise them intentionally for that purpose, and if I have plenty of room, I save all the fry that I can. But when I don't have room, I feed them to the adults. I breed selectively - if my best female is dropping and I have no room, I don't let her fry get eaten. I feed the adult fish some of the fry from another drop. I agree totally with Teflon. How can it really be worse to be eaten at a few days old than to live in a tank with far too many other fish, overcrowded, cramped and underfed, dying slowly of starvation or disease? If a female drops thirty fry every month for eighteen months, that's over five hundred fry in her lifetime. If just two of those 500 - 1/250th of the fry that are born by a conservative estimate - made it to adulthood, her job is done. She and her mate have been replaced. Livebearer populations are relatively stable. Nobody carries on about the fry that were born in the wild and got eaten.

Why? They weren't born in a glass tank. We didn't see them. Why does everybody feel better about letting fry born in a community tank get eaten? Because they didn't make the decision. If I wasn't the one holding the net, tipping the tiny babies into a tank with predators in it, knowing that their lives would end in seconds, it doesn't seem as bad somehow. I don't like using my fry as feeders, but I see no other option. I honestly think it would be crueller to keep them alive. It all comes back to Colin's point. We conveniently forget that a couple of days ago, that steak was a cow, walking around the paddock eating grass and scratching another cow's back. I'd be a hypocrite to rub it in - I have never seriously considered becoming a vegetarian - but it's a good point. Humans are visual creatures. If we don't see it we pretend it isn't happening. Why do you think the Africans are still starving and the gang warfare is still going on on the streets? We haven't been there and been exposed to it, so we forget all about it.