Ethics Of Scientific Aquarists

[Captain Retardo]

I can't be sure that they are farmed, but the pet trade is a business (sometimes a very very bad business) and farming fish in captivity is a lot lot cheaper than flying to some tropical country and paying some guys to go out with some nets to catch some fish, and bring them back to the country.

 

[CFC]

All topics like this do is pour fuel onto the flames of the animal rights activists who want to see fishkeeping and the keeping of any animal in captivity banned, dont think they wont see it because they will and suddenly you'll find it used as a direct quote on some anti fishkeeping site, if the fishkeepers themselves think they are being cruel then what hope is there.

A wild fishes life is a constant battle for survival, from the moment they are born almost everything around them wants to eat them, fewer than 10% of wild fry make it to adulthood, even then as full grown adults they face the daily trials of avoiding larger predators and mans fishing nets. Wild fish are often covered in parasites and lice which they have no means to get rid of, each day they must find enough food to stay strong enough to support the colony of hitchhikers they carry or they will die, at certain times of the year their habitat will dry up completely meaning they must find a deep hole of water or die, even then these holes also attract the attentions of fish eating predators so are by no means safe.

Captive fish by contrast have a life of luxury, the majority of fishkeepers do not keep prey and predators together and they dont have the fear of being speared by birds or caught in fishing nets. We clean them of parasites and give them protein rich foods on a regular basis, their homes are not seasonally affected and the chances of man made pollution posioning them is low. Most captive fish live far longer lives than their wild counterparts and some species will even grow larger than they would if they were left in the wild.

Which fish do you think is better off?

Anyway the short of it is if you feel disheartened by the fish keeping hobby then sell your tanks and fish and take up stamp collecting or knitting, just dont make posts which help towards getting the hobby that most of love abolished.

 

[Captain Retardo]

I don't feel bad at all for my fishes way of life, especially because they have been farmed and don't know the wild. But fish such as oddballs and marine fish I don't advocate because of the decrease in population of the native animal.

I just don't like the taking of wild fish from their habitat.

 

[DiscusKeeper403]

I can't be sure that they are farmed, but the pet trade is a business (sometimes a very very bad business) and farming fish in captivity is a lot lot cheaper than flying to some tropical country and paying some guys to go out with some nets to catch some fish, and bring them back to the country.

Well im ne i have no clue how this works so im hoping sum1 can help me. gotta new 25 gal tank gunna put 1 discus cory ctas n either an angel fish or a parrot fish which 1?

 

[CFC]

Your jullii corys, khulies and rasboros are most likely wild caught imports unless you bought them from a small private breeder.

A very small percentage of the fish available are actually farm bred, the wild fish trade is massive and supports whole villages in tropical South America, Africa and Asia.
The most common fish like bronze and peppered corys, bala sharks, tiger barbs and neons are indeed captive bred, as are many Cichlid species but please dont kid yourself that captive bred species are the norm because they really arent, if you cant stand the thought of fish being taken from the wild then give up the hobby now because its not going away and there will always be wild fish for sale.

 

[Captain Retardo]

Why would a small percentage of fish be farm bred, isn't it cheaper to breed them in mass quantities on fish farms.

I have trilineatus, i don't know if that makes a difference though. But I believe that I read the trilineatus are plentiful (???)

Are the fish that I keep endangered in the wild? Because If they are plentiful then I have no problem with wild fish for the fish keeping hobby.

 

[CFC]

Mass scale breeding takes up a lot of room so it just isnt possible to breed every species, some fish are also just not financialy viable for captive breeding as they are pleantiful in the wild so its not worth dedicating the space to breed them and spending the money on feed to raise fry to a selling size when you can simply net a few thousand out of the river.
Farms concentrate on breeding the "bread and butter" staple fish that every fish store in the world stocks or the high price tag fish like Discus and Asian arowana's.

The fish you have are all fairly cheap and commonly seen fish so i seriously doubt they are endangered or under any threat from commercial fishing for the aquarium trade.

 

[Captain Retardo]

Okay well in that case i have no problem with them taken from the wild as long the numbers of the wild fish are kept in check so that they don't go endangered and eventually extinct!

I am against the taking of wild, endangered fish because it would be terrible for it to go extinct, on a nature side (imbalance of ecosystem) and on a hobbyist side (you will never encounter or keep the fish again and neither will your children and so on)

 

[LiveLifeGoJump]

Isn't a lot of a fish's actions instinct, i.e. swim, feed & breed etc. and wether farmed or wild caught they will have similar instincts. In the wild the vast majority die in early life giving rise to the saying 'only the strong survive'. It's natures way of building a strong line in each species as the runts are disposed of. This is not the case with humans, from birth doctors fight to keep us alive regardless of our health or wishes. Human intervention is doing similar things with animals, often for financial gain over health of the animal hence the inbreeding problems associated with a number of fish (guppys etc.) and other animals.

It has been said that only foxes & humans kill for fun, all the rest kill to eat.

'Animal rights' say that there should be no testing on animals, blood sports amongst other things, and that the animals should be released into the wild (as they do with mink etc.) but following this logic ALL pets (inc. tropical fish) & domesticated animals (cows, sheep etc.) would have to be included. As many of these would not have even exsisted if it were not for man they would not be adapted for living in the wild so would this be cruel?

Nature way of controlling the animal population has worked well for millions of years, man's way of doing so for the last few thousand years has not. Our population increase is taking the habitat away from many species endangering their exsistance so shouldn't we be trying to redress that balance?

I am not a animal rights activist (nor am I a 'veggie' or 'vegan') but do believe that we should not wilfully commit cruelty to ANY animal.

So are we right or wrong to keep fish or is it yet another of those 'grey' areas where there is no right or wrong, the answer lying somewhere inbetween?

Bunging them in a bowl & chuching food now & again is wrong, caring for them (and learning from your mistakes) is as right as it gets.

 

[Captain Retardo]

Again as I said, they should test on the Bums and Criminals, they are especially useless and hurt normal people!

 

[raptorrex]

The tropical fish trade results in the suffering of untold numbers of fish. People engage in the business because it is profitable. By participating in the hobby - we encourage it. We can try to rationalise our hobby all we want but that's the simple truth of the matter.

@griz this says it all

@livelifegojump "It has been said that only foxes & humans kill for fun, all the rest kill to eat". anyone who has seen a cat play with its "pray" before killing it, may argue with this!

 

[goldfish]

i think that most if not all experiments on animals is for humans benifit. we treat animals with little or no respect. humans are unfortunatly destroying and damaging the planet.

We are, but this has nothing to do with treating animals badly.

As for fish keeping: Aren't most fish farmed now anyways? I don't believe a farmed fish has the brains to realize what he is missing. Although there are sometime terrible conditions for them (Stores, people who don't know about fish keeping and keep an oscar in a 10 gallon). I dont advocate collecting wild animals for the pet trade at all, although now I think I actually have some fish that are collected from the wild and I kinda feel bad (My kuhli loaches).

So a farmed fish has different neural processes than a wild one? Interesting hypothesis...

And, more importantly, it's okay to abuse a dumb fish but not okay to abuse a clever fish? Isn't that like saying that it's okay to medically experiment on mentally disabled people because they won't understand what's happening anyway?

Although I do not advocate keeping tropical animals at all, unless it is a farmed freshwater fish of course!

And where did the parents of the first farmed freshwater fish come from?

 

[OohFeeshy]

Everything we do began with some kind of cruelty. Fidh dying until we found out about the nitrogen cycle, fish starving until we found out what they eat, fish being stunted until we found out how big they grow...

 

[goldfish]

Again as I said, they should test on the Bums and Criminals, they are especially useless and hurt normal people!

If you genuinely mean that, then that's quite shocking.


(Perhaps you'd like to clarify how homeless people 'hurt' you?)

 

[OohFeeshy]

Okay well in that case i have no problem with them taken from the wild as long the numbers of the wild fish are kept in check so that they don't go endangered and eventually extinct!

I am against the taking of wild, endangered fish because it would be terrible for it to go extinct, on a nature side (imbalance of ecosystem) and on a hobbyist side (you will never encounter or keep the fish again and neither will your children and so on)

Yes, but taking a fish from the wild is still taking one whether it's a fish with five thousand million in the wild or just five thousand. Your arguement isn't very stable, you keep changing it to suit your own personal situation.