...I pointed out that several tropical fish species are threatened or extinct in the wild due to pollution (not to collection by aquarists!), and that hobbyists have a part to play in preservation...
this is very true. if it wasn't fopr people the white cloud mountain minnow would be extinct completely. they only exist in home aquaria and NONE exist in nature any more.
thsi is also true to some of the goodeid species. some have become extinct due to pollution, and well some are endangered to the point that humans have created programs to try to breed these in captivity, clean up their environment and reintroduce them.
do these things "interfere" with the natural course of nature? sure it does but that is a different debate. we are doing it for the good of the species not bad, it was man who put them in that possition, not the fish themselves, they jsut lived their lives liek normal and man ruined their natural environment.
like said before, taking anything out of it's natural environment is creul. where do you suppose serian hampsters come form originally? they are the ones that are commonly sold in petshops as shorthair and teddybear hampsters along with jsut the title "hampster". i could put money on that naturally they aren't from someone's house living in a cage.
liek said taking anything from it's natural environment is cruel. domestication could be considered cruel. you as a human even make your choice... work all day doing what someone told you to do, or sit around all day lounging in a feild or basking in the sun? i bet the animals would do what we would prefer to do, but liek us they can't.
also mentioned was lack of predation (in most cases), longer lives and generally healthier fish in home aquaria. also, hybrids don't occur in nature and some peopel love them. i myself own a couple. in nature most fish don't live past being born (if born at all). and it is a known fact also that most fish aren't even from thewild. most have only known a fishtank. their whole lives they have been bred and raised in a tank. so it would then be cruel to jsut dump them in a river don't you think? i think it's crueler to dump fish that for generations have been bred to not knwo the rivers they naturally come from and put it into that location than to take them out of it (even though i am all for reintroducing endangered or extinct species back into the wild- but that is completely different).
it's all a matter of choice, i feel as long as they aren't living in worse conditions than they would in nature (which in some cases it's pretty bad in nature), then i feel that by all means keep the fish. you are probably doing them a better justice by keeping them then letting them roam free in the oceans and rivers and lakes.
wow that was long, i hope everyone reads it, but i said my peice amnd i feel better. you have nothing to worry about. if you enjoy keeping fish by all means keep them. there is nothing wrong with it.
