Stupid site

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I found this site which is apparently trying to teach children how to look after fish but its advice is realy bad, 2 things i noticed at a glance;

"The combination of glass, electricity, and water is not safe for most children. So a warm water aquarium with a heater is not a good choice for young children. A safe combination is a plastic fish bowl without a heater or any other electrical device. Click here for more about the Fish Bowl Kit for children."

Isn't that extremely cruel if you deprive your tropical fish of heating, filtration and lighting??

"Show the child how to take a small three fingered pinch of food and put it all in the bowl. Or even better put the food in the cap, look at it, try to remember the amount, then flip it from the cap.

Then wait and carefully watch to see if all the food is eaten. If it is all eaten, then have the child put another small pinch of food into the fish bowl. Keep repeating this procedure until the animals are well fed."

There is a term called "overfeeding your fish"! And i think this is poor advice to give to a child to just keep feeding a fish until it can't eat anymore; im sure if i keep feeding my mollys until they stopped eating they'd eat all day until they popped or got serious constipation or other over-feeding related tank/fish problems.
Here's the site;

http/www.aquariumfish.net/information/fi...or_children.htm

Check out the extremely green water that fish is in on the page

 

[WILDER]

Never kept fish till the last two years nearly, so my children didn't have them as pet, i wouldn't advise them for small children as they are not a toy, and kids can't help themselves with having to pick things up and over feed them.

 

[boxman]

You can just see the caption now,

Little girl Looks down into the fish food pot "Mummy, the food has all gone"
Mum "We only opened that this morning"
Little girl "But the fish looked hungry!"

Good grief! Talk about misguided!

The food floating in the second picture is enough to feed mine for a few weeks!!!

Good job there are forums like this around to help!

Pete

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I know some of you may disagree with these but, i don't think fish keeping is a good hobby for kids 5yrs old or younger, fish keeping takes so much time and care and you have to know so much to do well. I don't think a child can look after fish by themselves under 6yrs old without the parent doing most of the hard work or doing loads of supervision.
But either way i thought the site was bad for young kids.

 

[boxman]

I agree Tokis

It's hard enough for the relatively experienced let alone a child - can you imagine a 6 year old doing a 20% water change for a 60g tank?

But I think if they're used to fish being looked after properly by parents then they may want one for themselves - then they can have the help they need by an experienced parent.

My friend has a small tank and he's careful to let his kids look after them (3 under 3yo!) and they're all doing really well.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

There is so much cruelty and people mistreatring fish in the world today though, how can we expect children to do any better if parents are giving advice like this?
Whats worrying though is that this site came up as the top search in google...

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

what is also dislike is people selling off fish and tanks as feng shui items, it gives completely the wrong approach and ideals to people first getting into the hobby. You shouldn't be getting a betta tank because it promotes good feng shui in your house, but because you want the fish as a pet/companion and not a decoration.

 

[wuvmybetta]

Aquariumfish.net was the first tropical fish site that I stumbled on, I found it very informative back in the day This particular segment may not be so great.

As with any pet, a parents supervision is always required with young children. Even the most responsible kiddo can't handle all the tasks of pet keeping without constant advice. No parent should expect an extremely young child to handle all of the responsibility, it's just not practical. With that said, I think fishkeeping is a wonderful hobby for kiddos and parents to do together. Start em off young and by the time they're 8 or so,they should have it down pat.

I have fish,fish and more fish but my daughter (6) doesn't take much interest in the manual labor that goes into them. She listens to what I tell her about each species, but beyond that...nada. We recently set up her very own ten gallon with two pairs of killies and knowing that these fish are hers she has taken an extreme interest in everything about them. She wants to be the one to feed them, which is extra work for me because I usually feed early in the day when she's at school,or late at night after she's in bed, so I do have to prepare the food for her and remind her daily to feed her fish. I'll do the wc's for now,because they make her nervous, but maybe someday soon she will take over completely. That will be a very proud day for me

 

[dwarfgourami]

I think it is a good idea to introduce young children to fishkeeping but ONLY on the understanding that the parents have the responsibility and make the decisions and the children get the fun (and a moderate amount of helping out to do).
Even my 4-year-old can count out enough fishflakes for the livebearers in the tank (catfish pellet even easier- as they get one per feed!), thogh I wouldn't let him do it unsupervised.
He has learnt lots about fishkeeping already: he went nearly berserk when I went to buy the ammonia for the fishless cycle ("Mummy, get away from there! Cleaning things aren't good for fish!"). I am sure he has grown more mature from this experience and will be better with animals all his life for having had it.
He accepted that I wouldn't buy him the red-tailed shark he wanted, just as he accepts that I won't let him drink alcohol or watch unsuitable TV programmes. It's just part of having kids that the parents are supposed to be in charge and fishkeeping is no different from other aspects of life. Kids expect their parents to exercise control. My son would never intentionally do anything that might be bad for his beloved catfish- and I'm there to make sure he doesn't do anything bad unintentionally. I let him join in the fishkeeping in the same spirit as I let his big sister help to nurse him when he was a baby- on the understanding that we do things together in the family and nobody is excluded- but Mummy is in charge.

Oh well, his birthday party is coming up next week so we'll see how I feel about mixing kiddies and fish after that. As a precaution, I have hired in the most animal-loving of my 8-year-old's friends, child with a manner like a sergeant major and a passionate devotion to the whole animal kingdom, from guineapigs to water beetles, to stand guard over the fishtanks. If we find a 4-year-old cut up in little shreds after the party, we'll know that he tried to tap the glass on the tanks.

 

[Bloo]

I am sorry but I oppose your thoughts Tokis. I think it's brilliant for kids to interact with animals from the very youngest of ages and teach them about care, consequence and responsibility - under the care and supervision of an adult until such age that the adult decides the child is old enough to take care of the animals themselves. No sane adult will give a 5 year old an entire fish bowl / fish (may that just be a goldfish) to be fully responsible for.
That fishbowl kit for kids stuff is about bettas and frogs - they can happily live in a small tank without filtration or heating but with regular water changes and in a house with central heating or in a country with warm climates. It even says a goldfish is too big for such a small bowl ! So I don't really see the problem

 

[Angry_Platy]

You said what I wanted to say bloozoo. You may have a 6 year old kid who is very capable of looking after a small tank and a few fish. The fish will thrive. On the other hand you may have a 14 year old who has a blase attitude to everything with too many huge tanks and buys fish cause they are mean or big or "have teeth" (I have seen some of these peeps on this forum)......the fish will outgrow the tank, the 14 yar old will get bored, end of story!!!

Should all kids be denied any pets sinply because the parents have to help look after them.....geez, I would never have had pets as a child if this were the case.

 

[scott67892002]

alot of people forget that kids arn't compleatly stupid with a little direction i can't see any reason why a child cant keep fish!

 

[jflowers]

I think introducing kids to fishkeeping is great and can teach them a lot. A responsible parent is the key. My parents got both my kids 5imp gallon tanks for christmas

My eight year old girl likes looking at it occasionally, but has no interest past the choosing a fish stage, so thats another tank I take care of. She has a betta and 2 ADF's BTW.

My ten year old (eleven tommorow) boy is the opposite, he has even saved up and with early birthday money, bought himself a 3' tank, researched his fish (on here and in books) and upgraded the filter (he thought a sponge was not sufficient, ) He even asked for some filter media from my community tank to, and his words here 'clone' his tank. How did he learn this? Well, when he seemed to show an interest, I got him to join up here and read and post, he even answers questions now, for me too. He can do all the tasks needed for looking after his tank, but needs a little help with water changes, but I am sure he will be doing that soon too.

That site has some bad info and like lots of the internet is not a be all and end all tutorial. The Internet is not like that, anyone can put anything on it, a very dangerous thing when you think about it.

Jon

 

[pica_nuttalli]

the vast majority of children under age 12 should only keep fish if an adult is prepared to help. i think its a bit much to expect a kid in elementary school to be solely responsible for daily feeding, water changes, remembering the lights, monitoring the temperature, adjusting the heater, maintaining filter flow, monitoring for symptoms of disease or poor water quality...

i don't think that the solution to these expectations is a small unheated fishbowl either. its like with every other pet--make the kid responsible for the little things and make them help out with the big things. once its evident that a kid is old enough to safely perform his own water changes and maintain the equipment, then let him take over caring for a fishtank. but until then, the parent needs to watch over and train the child. its a parent's role to provide guidance, support, and authority in a child's life. just throwing a kid into water is about as equally likely to teach them to swim as it is to teach them to drown.

 

[yvez9]

The fish bowl is actually 1.5 gallon and it comes with a betta, which is not bad at all, though this is stupid:

Notice we recommend putting the bowl in a cool part of your home where the water is 65 to 75 degrees F. not 78 to 80. The lower temperature allows more oxygen in the water and less fish waste because the animals' metabolism is slower

bettas breathe from the air, and they should be kept at temps around 70-80, although mine are fine at 66 degrees, i would like to give them a hotter environment...

We recommend that you change 20% of the water at least twice a week and replace it with bottled drinking water. Click here for more about changing water in fish bowls

ouch.... need i say more? plus, a bowl like that will not cycle itself efficiently enough to filter the ammonia/nitrites....

Cautionary Comments. A couple of good folks have sent comments saying that they took this plan for this kit, then went out and "bought all the parts and put it together, but it doesn't seem to be working." We checked and found out they had gravel but not cultured gravel, or they couldn't find any Aquatic Snails.
The cultured gravel and the Aquatic Snails are essential, and this combination doesn't work well without them. We'll be glad to ship you the cultured gravel and the Aquatic Snails, or the entire kit, and anything else you need. But please for sake of the animals do the entire plan, or it may not work

2 snails in a bowl like that will pollute the water in a day or two... and again they insist on cultured gravel...