# Poor Fish



## ALFA WOLF (May 24, 2005)

I left to dallas to go pick up a new tank and left my fish and animals to my sister trusting her. I come back to find that my sister broke a 20 gallon tank and decided to put my 10" tiger oscar in with my measly 2" comet goldfish in my 30 gallon tank. So as u might find out ALL of my 13 goldfish have "Mysteriously" disapeared. huh go figure. :rip: :rip: :rip: :rip: :rip: :rip: :rip:


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## Pac-Man (Mar 18, 2005)

srry for your loss.... thats horrible...its not fun losing fish...on a lighter note though, welcome to fishforums!!! well try to help you in any way we can in the future.


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## sbsociety (May 1, 2005)

Sorry for the loss... Just curious, how did she break the tank? That's quite a task without tipping it over or smashing it with a baseball bat...


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## fishfreaks (Jan 19, 2005)

sorry to hear your loss, that stinks. on the lighter side, welcome to the forums! hope you stick around!


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## margo (May 21, 2005)

Never leave your fish for somebody else to take care of. Take them with you or just let them go in a lake.

I left my fish with some Mormons next door once. It was wintertime and I told them to make sure that the heater was on and working properly. They were tropical fish and it was important. Well, I returned to cooked fish. They had turned the heater all the way up! :shock: No offense to Mormons. It's just I thought because they were Mormons, the fish would be in good hands.


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## margo (May 21, 2005)

Why aren't my smilies showing up?


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## Lexus (Jan 19, 2005)

"Never leave your fish for somebody else to take care of. Take them with you or just let them go in a lake."


NO stop with telling people to let their fish in a lake thats horrible! :chair:


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## flynngriff (Jan 19, 2005)

Yes, no one should EVER release their fish into the wild... It's very environmentally unsafe. There are many aquarium diseases that don't exist in the wild that could be transfered, not to mention how disrupting it could be to the natural food chain.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

NO! BAD Margo! Bad!
LOL!

When you leave your fish with a fish-sitter, it is very important to make sure that they fully understand just what it is that you want them to do, and how to do it. Usually the fish will do just fine without any attention at all for a few days, but it they are looked after by someone, that someone must know what they're doing. Even good people like Mormons aren't much help if they don't have a clue, so it's important that you make sure your sitter DOES have a clue. You can leave a list of things for them to check for, some do's and don'ts, etc...


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## sbsociety (May 1, 2005)

Repeat of what everyone else said. No, you don't release aquarium fish in lakes, rivers, reservoirs, the ocean, etc... First of all, yes, it will mess with the ecosystem, IF, it gets to that. Most likely, it will either die within a half hour due to water conditions or just get eaten by more hardy or bigger fish. 

As for not leaving them for somebody else to take care of... Why not? There's not problem with leaving them with somebody responsible. As long as they're responsible, and have been told what to do, there should be no problem. 

Oh and I really don't think anyone's race, religion, beliefs, etc... determine what kind of people they are. Being Mormon doesn't determine what they know about fish, or how reponsible they are. Not all Catholic priests molest children. Not all Middle Easterns blow up buildings. Not all black people eat fried chicken. Not all Mexicans are gangsters. And not all Asians eat dogs. <<Joking people, don't get ur panties in a bunch, just making a point, I'm Asian and my husband's black lol>> Anyway my point is, look at the individual you're leaving this important duty to, don't just assume you "can't leave your fish with other people". For sure, I know very responsible INDIVIDUALS...


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## Guest (May 25, 2005)

I think they may have been kidding...that could have been the reason why they were wondering why smilies weren't showing up...?


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## sbsociety (May 1, 2005)

Errmmm... I was kidding too (about the mormon thing). I wasn't all serious either... Just implying that people shouldn't refer to people by race or religion. (Ya know, like if I stood here going "Hey, look at the Jewish guy across the street"... rather than just saying "Look at that guy across the street") Anyway, that's why I also said <<I'm just joking, don't get your panties in a bunch...>> 

Well, about the leaving them to responsible people, and the don't just dump em in a lake thing I was actually serious. (Notice in this post and other ones, several people telling this same person to stop telling people to dump fish in lakes & such) 

Anyyywho, it's no biggie. No one's arguing right? Just normal conversation.


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## margo (May 21, 2005)

Get a pond, then, folks. I just know that fish like them. 

Btw, politics and fish make poor bedfellows. Unless a fish is running for office, I suggest that we not talk politics here.


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## fishboy (Feb 26, 2005)

before going away and leaving my neighbors in charge of my fish i clean my tanks, prepare individual food servings in bottle caps, leave detailed instructions on how many caps and at what time, and tell them to call me if anything looks like it's going wrong and not to touch anything.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

I once spawned some fish via remote control by having my neighbor spawn them for me while I was gone. I left detailed ( very detailed ) instructions for every contingency and a step-by-step plan of action. She'd report every few days what was happening, and I told her what to do. When I was home I got water prepared for water changes and portions of food measured out for use, and a schedule on a calendar for everything from photoperiod and temperature and water changes and such, and she did everything just fine.
She's only a beginner, but I've been teaching her. She has learned well, I must say, and together we have spawned the Bluenosed Shiner, which is VERY hard to do. ( only been done about a half-dozen times in the past century ) Not a bad feat for a lady who only discovered fishkeeping about four months previously.

The point of this is that anyone can be a good fish-sitter if they are only given enough instructions. If you must use a fish-sitter, and can't get a local hobbyist to help, then it's perfectly workable to teach a complete beginner. all you have to do is think about everything that could go wrong and what the sitter should do about it. It's really not as hard as it sounds.


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## Lexus (Jan 19, 2005)

How is race related to politics?


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## shev (Jan 18, 2005)

sorry if it seems everyone is jumping on you margo.

but releasing fish into the wild in my book is probably the biggest no no.

you shouldnt even release native species into local waters.

first off, the fish may have a disease that the native fish would be very susceptible to, since they'd have no ways of developing immunities beforehand. and you should definately not let the fish go if you know it has a disease.


when you release a nonnative species the native species didnt evolve along side the nonnative ones, and havent evolved to adapt to the fish. natural pressures that push evolution forward and not in every direction are the densitiy dependent factors like parasitism, competion, diease and predation. so the native fish may have no ways of naturally defending themselves against a predatorial fish, and there wouldnt be fish that have adapted to eat the non native fish. the non native may be able compete with, or out-compete the native fish. so the non natives may flourish with no predators and with being more able to compete. they can destroy the food chain from the bottom up, or the top down. maybe by eating everything on the end of the food chain starving everything above it, or eating the top predators letting everything that usually gets eaten by them to multiply like mad. same thing with diseases, the fish havent evolved to adapt to the disease that the non native could bring.


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## Cichlid Man (Jan 19, 2005)

Basically, releasing non-native species into the wild usually is never a good thing for both the environement, and the fish itself because it isn't adapted to the environement.


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## Celeste (May 13, 2005)

you shouldn't release fish into the wild unless your a trained professional with a rescue organization with government permission......


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## sbsociety (May 1, 2005)

Uh huh... remember what happened with the snakeheads released in Virginia... Cost the government lots of money because someone decided to dump 6 snakeheads in that lake... Screwed up the ecosystem...


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Snakeheads are QUITE yummy, you know. I don't know if that release was intentional or accidental, but most of the releases have been traced to asian immigrants who wanted them for food, with only one traced back to a fishkeeper, as I understand it.
The snakehead's peculiar breeding habit allowed it take off here like some aquatic kudzu.

By the way, the Snakehead is starting to be accepted in a small way as a gamefish to be intentionally fished for, just like carp and oscars. Since it looks like they're here to stay, it's a good thing that they're at least good for something, unlike most invaders. Zebra Mussel chowder, anyone? 

Anyway, that should serve as a reminder to us that it's a lot easier to keep an invader out of our waters than to get rid of it once it's established. Sometimes the ending isn't as happy as it was with oscars. Whirling Disease is an import introduced by exotic fish, and it's wiping out millions of fish up in the midwest-to-northwest areas. What a mess. Sadly, that introduction wasn't by a hobbyist, but by the gov ' t fisheries people who should have known better than to be so careless.


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## ALFA WOLF (May 24, 2005)

I remember a certain golden trout that was native to a certain river and to increas fishing thier the government released a bunch of non native trouts that eat all the food suplies for the golden trout. So they became endangered and one guy went in and caught ever trout he could and now they are climbing back up. So in other words dont put fish were they dont belong for the entertainment of fisherman.


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