Fish For Fish?

[RandomWiktor]

Bad idea, especially if you are mixing them with non-indigenous fish in your aquarium. Fish have natural bacteria, and parasites, that live in their bodies which they have built up a tollerance for. However, if you introduce those same bacteria and parasites to a fish from a totally different region, you risk a fatal infection (think Native Americans and Smallpox!) Furthermore, a fish that has lived wild all of its life will be badly stressed by captivity, and will more often than not die. You have to consider not just the stress of suddenly being exposed in an aquarium, but the also the sudden change in pH, diet, tank mates, surroundings, water hardness, etc. All vital health factors, and all major changes that will threaten your fish.
As people have mentioned - even if you live in America - bringing fish back to keep in an aquarium is more than likely illegal without a fishing liscence. You should also remember that many freshwater american fish are endangered from pollution and introduced species.

I have a big issue with wild caught fish, even in the tropicals hobby; I can trust that my bettas and goldfish came from breeders, simply because they do not exist naturally in their domesticated form. However, if I was buying a marine fish, I know that it is wild caught - potentially from some threatened stock in the ocean, where it has now been removed as an active, breedable adult.

It just seems to me that if you truly loved fish, you'd want them to thrive in their natural habitats. Snatching them from the wild for your own amusement certainly does not promote healthy wild populatons.

 

[Ethos]

i live in america. you can fish for as many fish as u want!

Thats not true. First you need a fishing licence if your older than 18.
There are also catch and release rules, like I know here in MN if the fish is too long, its illeagal, and if its too short its illegal.
I think the fish has to be atleast 5inches for it to be legal, and prolly under 1 foot to be legal.
I dunno, my dads a fisherman, I should ask him. This is just what i picked up from him...
And since MN has 11,000+ lakes, I'm sure we have tons of fishing rules....Like In the BWCA.
I did know of a guy who kept some native fish in a 65G.
his name was John, I think he kept sunnies. Cant remember though...

 

[IHave2Goldfish]

Yes i know that silly. what i mean is that my dad could take me fishing for one.

 

[CTS]

y would it be illegal?

Only if your caught!!!

 

[Synirr]

I'm surprised that no one mentioned that most of the fish you can catch get much too large for a 10 gallon, which is what Ihave2goldfish has. Unless you're planning to start a native species only tank and are willing to put forth the effort to feed the fish live foods and make their environment as close to the wild as possible, it's a bad idea.

 

[littleimp]

I used to work in the importing industry in the warehousing & we used to see live fish being checked out by customs/animal welfare type people. Fish are shipped in their hundreds with a good proportion floating in the bags too

They work on a percentage, as longs as a certain percentage live it's ok & then they get shipped by lorry or train to their intended destination in the UK, invariably to a distributor. Unfortunately the acceptable death rate is quite large, not accounting for the death rate in the native country too!!!!!!!!!

With tropical fish, I thought only a limited amount are captive bred, most are wild caught, aren't they?


For you too buy your healty specimem, 2-3 more have proably died!!

 

[dwarfgourami]

I agree with the people who say don't do it- because of risk of disease, and issues of space and so on. These are serious considerations, and I certainly would not encourage a beginner to go out and help themselves; you could do a LOT of harm that way. I wouldn't do it myself either; I would rather keep something the care of which was better understood.

But as for cruelty, I think littleimp says it all. Cruelty does not disappear because we don't see it with our own eyes. As for the way some non-wild fish are inbred and brought up on antibiotics etc- I'm not sure this is not more cruel. Like battery hens. And being shipped from Singapore is likely to be just as stressful as being netted off a shore in Britain.

With the exception of goldfish and bettas, I wouldn't say any aquarium fish has been domesticated long enough to be regarded as a domesticated animal. They may have adapted to water hardness etc in a few generations, but they still basically have the instincts of wild animals. And let's face it, we don't all restrict ourselves to goldfish and bettas.

What we can all do is to cut down on the stress and try to source locally bred fish- or get them off each other, like Synirr's bettas.