Hi thelastbetta
Welcome to the real world. This is how the food chain works.
I'd be much more concerned with a small child seeing a lot of the gratuitous violence done to people, when he or she watches the television.
Its a food chain but no where near a natural one, aside the whole gruesome mutilated zombie goldfish getting eaten alive in a petshop during day light hourse where little innocent children may come in whose parents have not yet begun to explain to them about the facts of life and giving them David Attenborough documentorys with lions tearing zebras apart to watch yet sort of thing- "pause"-, i think it gives the wrong image about oscars, goldfish and fish keeping in general, i can point out quite a few issues with this particular lfs's actions;
a. I have never kept any fish that require live foods such as fish themselves to eat, but i am sure that your average oscar or similar predatory fish does not need a meal so large(i.e large goldfish) that it takes all day to take chunks out of it just to kill it. What is wrong with just dropping some small guppys or baby goldfish in there that can be eaten in 2 bites or swallowed whole
?
People here are always going on about morality with fish, good stocking in tanks and how to put down a fish humanely, what is the point of preaching this stuff if it is just as acceptable to let a fish die a death that could last hours? Goldfish are seen just as much as prized pets to fish keepers just as much as any other fish, the rules/practices should not be thrown out of the window just because the fish is doomed to become a meal for another fish.
b. Goldfish although commonly used as feeder fish to predatory tropical fish due to their cheepness and availability, are not actually very healthy for or well suited to predatory tropical fish. Feeder goldfish have far thicker slime coats and higher fat contents than tropical feeder fish due to them having to survive and prosper in such cold temperatures.
The vast majority of tropical fish out there find difficulty in digesting fats as they do not store them in their body like we due as otherwise they run the risk of over-heating because their body temperature is mostly controlled by the temp of the water surrounding them. Although most fish don't say no to a tasty slimecoat, the shear volume of slime coat goldfish have can be difficult for tropical fish to digest all the time and inevitably be negative for their health in the long term.
If you are a lfs trying to sell healthy tropical pedatory fish and feeder fish, surely it makes sense to buy tropical feeder fish such as guppys for higher prices and to also have healthy vibrantly colored predatory fish who will sell better?
c. If the lfs deliberatly fed the oscars a large goldfish during the day, i think the other issue they are putting out towards posible customers is that they make predatory fish seem too "novelty fish" in my honest opinion.
I have known loads of people before i bought my first fish many years ago, to have gone out and bought fish such as piranha's because they thought it would be cool to see them tear creatures apart in a bloody feeding frenzy. Little did they know that they required a large tank, regular hefty water changes due to the high protein diet the fish were been fed, the feeding fenzys wern't as spectular as expected and the food was very expensive in the long run, and in general the fish were a disapoint.
I don't think it helps if you see lfs advertising predatory fish such as oscars as violent exciting predatory fish if you take into consideration and the double the fact almost about 85% or more of lfs's do not tell you the truth about the fish they are selling to you about facts like the size of tank they require, cycling tanks, costs of general upkeep etc etc...
Overall i think all of this taken into consideration just ends up with alot of goldfish meeting mizerable deaths, plenty of beautiful predatory fish leading ill lives and no morality taken into any of this.
And if a kid did put the goldfish in the oscar tank and it wasn't the lfs staff, why did the lfs staff not retrieve it earlier or simply supervise the fish tank area better
?
