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I found this eye-opening article on releasing aquarium fish (both fresh and salt) into non-native water and found it very educational. Thaought I would share:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207878,00.html

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

ya know red, there was a story like that up here in Detroit earlier this year. The one this guy caught was about 12 inches. And of course the news at first made it out to be a Piranha, but as I could tell when I seen it, they pointed out it was a Pacu.

unfortunly, I could never find the story on their site. and this is exactly why my 150g tank sat empty for like 6 months, until i found what wouldnt out grow my tank

Fish tanks are an expensive addiction

It's a good idea not to release exotic species. They're a leading cause of extinctions... And with less biotic diversity (even of things like plants that people might think are boring), we lose so much beauty, opportunities for economic gain or pharmaceutical discovery, and chances to learn about the incredible organisms that populate the earth.

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The real issue is illnesses. NTD spores for example are not killed by water chlorination, and flushing a fish who died of NTD could lead to NTD entering native fish stocks, causing decimation

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

That isn't the only real issue, but I agree, it is important.

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Ask an Australian about rabbits. That's ALL you need to know about the perils of alien introductions.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

yea i dont know why people would just release a fish that they cant keep, first why get it if you cant keep it, and second that just proves that lack of research b4 getting a pet is growing....

but anyway goodf article

Not rabbits... Cane toads..

Heh I forgot about those for the moment Adam ... however, the hoo-ha over myxomatosis and calcivirus to control rabbits was uppermost in my mind when I chose that particular example ...

Oh yes, Cane Toads count as a CLASSIC example of what can go wrong when you introduce something alien to an environment ... plus of course there's the fun and games in Florida over Clarias batrachus walking catfishes, the introduction of Pacus to some US waters, and the furore over what might happen if someone is stupid enough to release Piranhas into the Florida Everglades ...

Trouble is though, not all introductions are preventable without extreme measures. Insects and spiders have a habit of hitching lifts unseen on aircraft and ships ... which is how the Tiger Mosquito, Aedes albopictus, ended up in the US. The eggs were laid in rainwater that had collected in old tyres in Japan, the water dried up, the tyres were shipped to the US, the tyres were left out in a rainy climate on arrival, the eggs hatched out, and before you could say "oh drat", the Tiger Mosquito became established. Which is not good news because Aedes albopictus is a vector for dengue haemorrhagic fever, a disease which strikes humans and in some places has a 67% mortality rate ...

We had a bit of a flap here in the UK three years or so ago when someone spotted some weird butterflies in their gardens. Turned out the species in question was Cacyreus marshalli, the Geranium Bronze, a native of South Africa, that arrived here as larvae nestling in the crowns of imported geraniums for gardens. Fortunately it's sedentary and doesn't spread well, but it gave us a wake up call as to what could happen if something far less benign and fast-spreading turned up ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002