Flushing / Binning Dead Fish

If you do flush your fish make sure they go down all the way.

Here's a reason not to flush:

After college, I lived in a two family house with a couple of roommates. A bunch of friends kind of cycled through the house and one of the previous housemates had set up a fishtank. However, he left and didn't take the tank with him. The tank contained a fairly large Jack Dempsey, about 7 inches long and an even larger Tinfoil Barb, probably about 10 inches long and 6 inches thick. None of us in the house knew much about fish at the time so we just kept feeding the fish and occaisionally changed the water. Although the Tinfoil Barb was large, eventually the Dempsey started picking on it. It was sad but inevitably the Dempsey killed the Barb. Not knowing what else to do we flushed the fish down the toilet.

Unbeknowst to me, the barb was actually too big to fit down the pipe. I flushed the toilet, it seemed to go down but it actually clogged the pipe and toilet kept running. I walked away not knowing that the toilet was starting to overflow.

About five minutes later I hear the neighbor downstairs start to complain "Hey! where's this water coming from?" He ran upstairs and asked if we were running water. At first we said no because we were just sitting in the living room watching TV. Then it dawned on my that it might be the toilet. We ran into the bathroom and stopped the toilet from running.

The neighbor then complained that water was dripping down into his daughter's room. He took me down there to see it and she was dilligently trying to move or cover her TV, stereo and other belongings so that the dripping water would not damage her things. However, the water was too much. All of a sudden the entire ceiling collapsed flooding her room with toilet water and wet plaster. It was a complete disaster!

The landlord sent a plumber the next day to snake out the toilet but we never admitted to flushing the fish down the pipe. Instead we blamed the flood on the poor flooring and bad caulk job around the toilet, which was indeed the case. While the landlord suspected we flushed something down the toilet, the plumber never recovered the body so he didn't have a case.

The moral of the story is never flush a fish without measuring first!
 
Umm... I threw the first two away but flushed the third. TBH, I can't really throw it away because we have 3 moggies that go through the rubbish is they get the slightest whiff of anything edible. And I don't really think Dad will appreciate me digging up the garden for a fish. When our hammies die we bury them under a paving slab but A) The rabbit hutch is on top of it and B ) I don't fancy digging u the remains of sandy, gordon, pip, squeak, hazel and patch :)
Oops. spelling :*)
 
I'm from Bethnal Green in East London and we have a slighty more local saying we
"Bog Em" even though they are dead I always wonder if they come back up swimming sad really, poor little sods. :byebye:
 
OohFeeshy said:
Umm... I threw the first two away but flushed the third. TBH, I can't really throw it away because we have 3 moggies that go through the rubbish is they get the slightest whiff of anything edible. And I don't really think Dad will appreciate me digging up the garden for a fish. When our ahmmies die we bury them under a paving slab but A) The rabbit hutch is on top of it and B ) I don't fancy digging u the remains of sandy, gordon, pip, squeak, hazel and patch :)
:p Help me out here, OohFeeshy! In all my life, I have never heard of moggies or ahmmies. Is this a UK thing? We have possums, raccoons, and stray cats here in the States that will get into the garbage. And you have totally stumped me on "ahmmies", I can't even imagine what that might be. ;)
 
my moms freind flushed down black mollies live because she was just tuered of keeping fish yikes
 
If a small fish in the house dies I flush and large fish go in the trash. If I lose someone in the fishroom I toss them under this bush outside :*)

I don't buy the introducing diseases into the sewer system bit. Lets just take a moment to think about what usually goes down the toilet.....dead fish doesn't seem so bad now :whistle:
 
I'm sure some people flush grooser things then dead fish down the bog :) And yes I did mean hamsters and cats, I had a random spelling lapse.
 
FoundMoney said:
If you do flush your fish make sure they go down all the way.

Here's a reason not to flush:

After college, I lived in a two family house with a couple of roommates. A bunch of friends kind of cycled through the house and one of the previous housemates had set up a fishtank. However, he left and didn't take the tank with him. The tank contained a fairly large Jack Dempsey, about 7 inches long and an even larger Tinfoil Barb, probably about 10 inches long and 6 inches thick. None of us in the house knew much about fish at the time so we just kept feeding the fish and occaisionally changed the water. Although the Tinfoil Barb was large, eventually the Dempsey started picking on it. It was sad but inevitably the Dempsey killed the Barb. Not knowing what else to do we flushed the fish down the toilet.

Unbeknowst to me, the barb was actually too big to fit down the pipe. I flushed the toilet, it seemed to go down but it actually clogged the pipe and toilet kept running. I walked away not knowing that the toilet was starting to overflow.

About five minutes later I hear the neighbor downstairs start to complain "Hey! where's this water coming from?" He ran upstairs and asked if we were running water. At first we said no because we were just sitting in the living room watching TV. Then it dawned on my that it might be the toilet. We ran into the bathroom and stopped the toilet from running.

The neighbor then complained that water was dripping down into his daughter's room. He took me down there to see it and she was dilligently trying to move or cover her TV, stereo and other belongings so that the dripping water would not damage her things. However, the water was too much. All of a sudden the entire ceiling collapsed flooding her room with toilet water and wet plaster. It was a complete disaster!

The landlord sent a plumber the next day to snake out the toilet but we never admitted to flushing the fish down the pipe. Instead we blamed the flood on the poor flooring and bad caulk job around the toilet, which was indeed the case. While the landlord suspected we flushed something down the toilet, the plumber never recovered the body so he didn't have a case.

The moral of the story is never flush a fish without measuring first!
oh my! thats awful! toilet water everywhere! :sick:
i hope no one was hurt!

my giant oranda died a few weeks ago (he was my buddy)
i cried and cried and i had a funeral for him. he was buried with all of my other lost pets over the years.
 
As a sewage engineer I can confirm that the main problem with flushing fish would be getting them stuck in the pipes. Though I guess tetras, etc you wouldn't have to worry about.

As for any contamination issues.......well if the fish does make it all the way to your local sewage treatment works in one piece then its going to stay in one piece.

99% of sewage treatment works treat sewage on settlement priciple. The solids sink and the liquid (which 99% of incoming flow is liquid) is put into the stream or river by the side of the works. There is some aerobic bacterial activity which eats away at the solids making them smaller.

But any solids left over are called sludge and given to a farmer to spread on his crops. So next time you're walking thru a carrot field keep an eye out for those dead fish in the soil :D

Chances are though most fish would be chopped into little bits by pumps as they pass dow nthe sewerage system.
 

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