Are fish the most abused pet?

[Redearsunfish]

The problem is most of the general public HAVE NO IDEA how hard it is to keep a tank. We fool ourselves thinking its easy. I spend 25-50 hours a week in my fish room - that's not an "easy past time". Enjoyable, yes - easy no.

Most fish leaving pet stores are doomed. That's probably a fact. But whose fault is it?

The reality is there really is no such thing as a beginner fish is there? Can you name me even one? I bet you can't.

Maybe the convict cichlid. And they will kill most everything in a "beginners tank" - leading to their eviction.

 

[SawickiB]

The problem is most of the general public HAVE NO IDEA how hard it is to keep a tank. We fool ourselves thinking its easy. I spend 25-50 hours a week in my fish room - that's not an "easy past time". Enjoyable, yes - easy no.

Most fish leaving pet stores are doomed. That's probably a fact. But whose fault is it?

The reality is there really is no such thing as a beginner fish is there? Can you name me even one? I bet you can't.

Maybe the convict cichlid. And they will kill most everything in a "beginners tank" - leading to their eviction.

Betta fish, the live terrible lives but are very easy to do right. But time consuming and easy are two different things IMO, and you most likely have many tank right? A simple tank is actually an easy, you can literally make a tank almost self sustainable if done right, although not easy to do that lol

 

[krichardson]

Betta fish, the live terrible lives but are very easy to do right. But time consuming and easy are two different things IMO.

Agreed,one tank or two in a persons home should be easy and time effective to maintain but a whole room full of various sized tanks is an entirely different kettle of fish lol.

 

[screaminleeman]

Well, they are most likely the least "dependent" on us keepers on a daily basis than many other pets. Many fish in the wild don't eat the quantity of food or in the frequency many fish keepers feed them. It is considered "abuse" to not feed a dog or cat at least one meal a day. It is NOT unhealthy for a keeper to feed many species of fish kept in aquaria every other day, or occasionally less.

Starving: I have "starved" MANY predators fish to "FORCE" them to take non-live up to 1 week, and NEVER lost one doing so. It is a common practice and most of us do not think of ourselves as "abusing" the predator fish "altering" it's diet.

Try telling animal lovers that you starved your dog for a week getting it off of table scraps onto dog food. Yep, Animal abuser!

Different husbandry involved with fish and non-wet pets.

 

[Joao M]

I agree with lots of what has been said, specially that a tank is usually seen as a piece of furniture, when not as a new toy for the kid to play with.

The most complicated thing to consider (or admit) in these topics has to do with the "need of death" in order for any commercial activity that deals with fish to prosper. Let´s face it: if everybody kept their fish for their normal lifespan, the hobby would decline.
Why?

a) Space is limited; even if we keep adding more and more tanks...there is a limit our houses/families can handle ;
b) If the fish don´t die at "our" tanks, "we" can´t buy more ("we" and "our" as the hobbyists in general);
c) If we can´t buy more fish, shops don´t sell them
d) if shops don´t sell, importers don´t import and distributors can´t distribute...

It´s sad but simple, in fact.

We can argue that newcomers to the hobby could sustain it, but.... that would not be enough in the long run.

Most of the shops are still on the business because every week some clients come back to replace the (some) fish they killed the week before. Unless they kill all the fish in the first days; those usually give up

A frienf of mine is a distributor in my country (for SW) and used also to sell directly. I kept SW tanks for more than 20 years and he used to say to me: "you´re a good friend but a terrible client, because I can only sell you your stocklist once in a given period and not 5 to 10 times like happens with my typical clients".

 

[Redearsunfish]

Betta fish, the live terrible lives but are very easy to do right. But time consuming and easy are two different things IMO, and you most likely have many tank right? A simple tank is actually an easy, you can literally make a tank almost self sustainable if done right, although not easy to do that lol

Betta fish are not easy. They are easy to kill, not easy to keep to their full size and life span. in my humble opinion.

 

[Redearsunfish]

Agreed,one tank or two in a persons home should be easy and time effective to maintain but a whole room full of various sized tanks is an entirely different kettle of fish lol.

Even one tank is easy to keep if fish dying every 6-8 months is normal. I see it all the time. One tank is not easy, not to joe public. Joe publics idea of easy is never changing the water or maintaining the filter, or over or improper stocking, that is what is easy to joe public.

Lets not fool ourselves, a fish tank, even one is not easy in any way.

 

[Redearsunfish]

I can tell you of a half dozen people who have easily killed betas in the last 2-3 years. They always come to me and say "what did i do wrong".

I say you tried to keep a beta. They are far from beginner fish, unless killing fish is a beginner thing to do.

 

[krichardson]

I always thought they grew to about two inches or so,so just how big do they get?...The above two posts are more or less examples of people not doing the right things with their tanks and fish rather than whether or not maintaining a tank is easy...There is far too much of that where aquarium fish are concerned in my opinion.

 

[Redearsunfish]

We must not fool ourselves. I have 33 years fishkeeping experience and i would never ever say its easy. Even one tank.

I always tell people if they want a tank, they'd better be "hobbyists" and not "people who own a fish tank" otherwise that tank is going to be in the garage or at the curb inside of 12 months.

I've seen it a thousand times.