The
Big Tank Buster Debate |
| Daphne Layley |
colleague of mine who worked for the
Environment Agency had a call from a member of the public
who said that there was a large strange-looking fish dying
by the bank of the local canal. My friend and his assistant
found the fish, which was just about dead. It measured over
3 feet long and eventual identification confirmed the fish
to be an Oxydoras (Pseudodoras) niger.
Someone must have bought this large Dorad as a baby, perhaps
oblivious to its potential size; they must have fed it well
and, like Topsy, it just grew and grew. When they finally
could not house or cope with it any longer they dumped it
into the cold waters of the canal. The fact that such a
beautiful and gentle creature should have endured such an
awful death does not bear thinking about.
Pseudodoras
niger sitting astride a Red-tailed
Catfish |
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Nevertheless it begs several questions, firstly - was the
customer told how big it would get when he bought the fish?
Assuming he or she got it from a shop, did the staff warn
him of it’s potential size and check that it’s
housing requirements would be met; and then did he buy it
anyway, assuring them that he could provide a huge tank
for it? In that case the retailer was not to blame
but the customer was. Or secondly - was
it just a simple ‘cash for fish’ transaction
with no questions asked by either side? In that case the
customer was to blame for not asking the
relevant questions but the retailer was also to
blame through either ignorance of his stock or
the lure of a fast profit with no thought of the fish’s
welfare. Or thirdly and worse still - did the customer ask
and was he told that ‘Yes – it is perfectly
OK for a 3 foot long community tank’? In that case
not only was the retailer definitely to blame but
also he should have his competence as a pet trader critically
scrutinised by the appropriate authority and, if I had my
way, his licence would be revoked.
This is just one of many similar instances but the questions
which I have applied to the above scenario, could and should
be applied to all these cases which we are hearing about,
and the truthful answers, if only it were possible to get
at them, wouldn’t make pleasant listening.
As in most aspects of life, it is the few who bring disrepute
to the majority, and this sad subject is no different. There
are many experienced fish keepers out there who love and
specialise in large fish (not always but quite often large
catfish) and who have enormous tanks and tropical ponds
and equally large filtration systems to match and I am lucky
to count myself amongst them. Very often, these fish become
almost members of the family and are spoilt rotten, becoming
tame and living many years longer than perhaps they would
in the wild, where they have to run the gauntlet of even
larger toothy predators, natives with harpoons and hungry
children to feed, and the drying out of their natural habitat
if the seasonal rains are late. Some of these species, those
which attain a maximum length of perhaps two feet, are often
slow moving and sedentary fish who display a certain degree
of intelligence or at least learn to recognise and respond
to their human keepers, and are reasonably easy for the
experienced enthusiast to cope with, provided all the criteria
necessary for their welfare are met in a generous and humane
fashion.
These slightly smaller “biggies” such as Tinfoil
Barbs, Oscars, Jaguar Cichlids etc. to name but a few, can
still prove problematical to the unwary novice. These all
look really cute in the shop when they are two inches long
but they don’t stay that size very long, and if you
haven’t done your homework or if the retailer doesn’t
warn you, you’ll soon have big trouble in little tanks!
As I said before, in the hands of experienced fish keepers
who have big tanks and filters, these smaller tank busters,
and others like them can make excellent pets and it is not
really these species, or their devoted keepers, that this
article is aimed at.
However, we all know our limitations and there are some
fish that even the most dedicated and well equipped of us
would not dream of trying to keep because it is just not
practical and, more importantly, not fair on the fish. There
are always exceptions, and there is bound to be at least
one lottery-winning reader out there who has a tropical
pond the size of an Olympic swimming pool. But for the vast
majority of us, some species which are probably best left
alone include Giant Pacu, Pangasius and Channel
Catfish, ultra large Pimelodid, Bagrid, Clarias
and Silurid Catfish, Red Snakeheads, Arapaima, large Tiger
Fish, some giant Cichlids, Giant Gouramies, extra large
Barbs such as Lemon-fins etc. etc…the list goes on!
Ictalurus
punctatus - Channel Catfish |
|
However, there are a few sad souls out there who, for a
variety of reasons, have the need to keep very large, predatory,
dangerous looking animals, fish or reptiles with often exaggeratedly
fearsome reputations, in totally unsuitable sized cages
or aquariums in their living rooms just as status symbols
to impress their gullible friends and to make them think
they must be very macho and powerful to possess such beasts.
Perhaps, if they were dog owners instead, it might be Pit
Bull Terriers…
When the friends finally get bored and the novelty wears
off, the poor creature is off-loaded, either by being advertised
or offered to a shop (if one can be found that will take
it) or, if it’s not so lucky, released in a dark place
such as the local pond, canal, or woodland at the dead of
night (ref: first paragraph). They are the sort of people
whose irresponsible and often downright cruel actions spoil
things for the rest of us, and they are the sort of people
who shouldn’t be allowed to buy these animals. But
how can the concerned retailer be sure which customers are
bona-fide enthusiasts and which ones aren’t, and therefore
who should they refuse to sell a baby tank buster to? More
importantly, what can be done about those retailers who
don’t care either way providing a nice wad of crisp
twenties is waved under their nose - it happens!
These shops are most definitely in the minority, but we
must not let the few spoil it for the rest. The vast majority
of shops are extremely reputable and I know of many who
will put a potential customer through an intensive barrage
of questions about tank size, filters, etc., and even then
refuse the sale if they are not satisfied with the answers
they are given. These shops do this voluntarily and are
quite prepared to lose the sale of a fish costing perhaps
many hundreds of pounds for the sake of the fish’s
welfare and the shop’s own reputation. This is a very
commendable attitude but, as I said, it is the retailers
choice - so far the ‘vetting’ of a potential
customer by a shop is not the subject of any legal obligation,
only perhaps a moral or ethical one!
I went recently, incognito, into a branch of Maidenhead
Aquatics and pretended to be interested in buying a large
Red-Tailed Catfish that was on display. I deliberately asked
some pretty dumb questions after which I found myself being
comprehensively interrogated by a member of staff who eventually
said that they would not consider the sale, until one of
the staff had paid me a house visit to inspect the aquarium
and filtration system which I proposed to use for the fish.
I was so impressed by this that I contacted the manager
and congratulated him on his policy. Another shop with exemplary
ethics regarding the sale of tank busters is Wharf Aquatics
in Nottinghamshire who also have much more thought for the
welfare of the fish they sell than they do about laughing
all the way to the bank. These are just two of the vast
majority of our shops who do the right thing, but we all
know a few who don’t; let’s hope some of them
are reading this!
So, I have talked about the rights and wrongs of the customer
and also of the retailer but there are other factors to
be considered. For instance, what happens when a retailer
orders certain fish from the wholesaler’s list only
to find, upon delivery, that the ordered fish are out of
stock and have been substituted by another species? For
example I know of a shop that recently ordered some small
Asian Mystus catfish only to find that they had been replaced
with another Bagrid, the Giant Indian River Catfish, Sperata
(Aorichthys) aor, a voracious predator with a potential
length of over seven feet. What would we expect the retailer
to do in such a case? Why, jump on the telephone to the
wholesaler of course, but that does not help the fish, does
it? Assuming that the fish, however unwanted by the shopkeeper,
had been in the bag for several hours and were already stressed,
should they be sent back to the wholesaler and endure another
several hours of stress and perhaps arrive back already
dead or dying? Or should the retailer try and make the best
of a bad job and put them on display in the shop with a
warning note to customers saying that when mature, this
fish will be seven feet long, whereupon it will be capable
of eating cats, dogs and small children?
Sperata
(Aorichthys) aor - Giant Indian River
Catfish |
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Perhaps, on the other hand, the retailer is in a hurry to
deal with his shipment and is not familiar with the slight
and sometimes superficial differences, (which may or may
not always be evident) which this species exhibits from
the ones that were originally ordered. After all, at 3 inches
long, these are all greyish brown with barbels at one end
and a penchant for hiding under any hardware in the tank.
What if a customer buys one, thinking it will only get to
4 inches? We might just find ourselves with the same scenario
that started this article. In this case you might be forgiven
for saying that the wholesaler should take some
blame but, what if the supplier who supplies the
wholesaler only lists the available species by common name
as is often the case? We all know that the same common name
can be applied to several different species, which is why
scientific taxonomy - however tongue twisting to some of
us - must be the definitive; but that does not help the
wholesaler when he is hurriedly scanning the list of available
species from the Far East, or South America or wherever.
In that case, perhaps we might feel that sometimes the suppliers
are to blame for not having some sort of standardised
naming system, but is that really practical when new species
and zonal variations are being discovered all the time?
If there were legislation to restrict the import of certain
species, how would it be implemented? Could the relevant
authorities employ enough people with enough specialised
knowledge to be able to identify and distinguish one small
brown fish from another, in a bag of many similar ones,
as they are unloaded off the plane? I personally don’t
think so. Even if they could, what would happen to the illegal
species in the shipments? – our zoos and public aquariums
are already overstocked. So, would the offending fish have
to be killed – after all, they could hardly be sent
back, could they?
There is yet another angle to this
– many of the largest and most spectacular species
are becoming rare in their natural habitat, some to the
point of near extinction. There are many reasons for this
– deforestation to make way for roads, crops or grazing
farm animals, dam building, pollution and the aquarium trade
to name but a few. The indigenous peoples have caught and
eaten these fish for thousands of years but they only take
what is needed for the cooking pot and they realise the
importance of preserving some adult breeding stock. After
all, one does not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs!
The aquarium trade however, did not seem so concerned with
maintaining the status quo and the indiscriminate capture
of, for example, sexually mature Amazonian Red Tailed Catfish
over the last few decades has resulted in the disappearance
from many areas, of the really large specimens that used
to breed there. Recently the authorities have started to
realise their mistakes and this species (and many others)
are now being artificially bred in the Far East from where
today’s aquarium specimens come.
Surely this is like ‘closing the stable door after
the horse has bolted’. If there had not been such
a demand, twenty or so years ago, for this species of tank
buster (and others like it), perhaps more of those big mature
females would still be breeding out there in the Amazon
– here I must hold my hand up and admit to buying
an eighteen inch long specimen twenty-plus years ago and,
thinking back, it was obviously wild caught. But hindsight
is a wonderful thing, so they say, and if my actions in
those days, along with others like me, contributed to the
decimation of that magnificent species in the wild, then
I can only say how much I regret it now and wish that I
could put the clock back. Thank goodness, in a way, that
they can breed them artificially now – at least the
species will not die out completely – but instead
of supplying the world’s aquarium trade with thousands
of 3 inch long baby Red Tails, which will doubtless grow
up to be the next generation of tank busters, I would like
to see some of them be restocked back into the Amazon from
whence we took their predecessors, all those years ago.
Maybe there is something like that already happening –
I don’t know but I’d like to think so.
And so we go round in circles; even if legislation were
applied to limit the import of certain tank busters, some
specimens would always sneak through in the guise of something
smaller and more community-compatible, although others,
more easily identifiable, would be lost to true enthusiasts
forever. As a lifetime devotee of big catfish, I know I
would be cutting my nose off to spite my face if I campaigned
to stop these tank busters being sold completely, but I
would like to see their sale controlled and perhaps, limited
to large displays and public aquariums and only to individuals
who were licensed and approved by an authoritative body.
That is not as daunting as it sounds – I hold a DEFRA
licence to keep certain species of coldwater fish and it
cost me nothing but I had to prove that I had adequate facilities
and a good reason for wanting to keep the species concerned.
I realise that this is a very emotive subject and I shall
probably receive some fairly vociferous replies from both
sides of the divide, but I feel that it had to be said,
and it’s long overdue. After all, you don’t
go into the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat!
In conclusion, on the grand scale of things, trying to stop
beautiful and exotic fish from being dumped in a cold canal
is far much more important than one person’s (arguably)
slightly selfish hobby.
Copyright - Daphne Layley
Originally printed in an abridged form in Practical Fishkeeping
and titled “Enough is Enough”
Photo Credits: Pseudodoras niger :-
Danny Blundell
Ictalurus punctatus:- Paul
A.Scharf
Sperata
aor :- Denise
R. Archambeault
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