This made me disgusted and furious!

DMD123

Administrator
Staff member
Contributing Member Level III
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

The drugging to catch was pretty bad, but then to flop them in the way they did was horrible. Wonder who had the bright idea to capture that on video? Not a good business promotion.
 

Gryphon

New Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

That is just horrible! I looked at the poster, seems they are a part of this "Lucky fish farm". I wanted to smack them both with a 2x4.
 

CrazedAce

New Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

I bet the guy behind the camera was someone high up, and the dude doing it was his lackey. With as many fish as they have, I'm surprised I didn't see any more employees. That's probably why they were going so fast. What was it that he "drugged" them with anyways?
 

Paintguy

Active Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

I have heard that Hawaii has a big problem with divers using bleach to catch fish... the 1 gallon empty jugs washing up on their pretty shores too.
 
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

These are the same people that drain their tanks like crazy, and fill them up quickly. I don't know how "beneficial" that is for the discus, sure they get fresh water, but just the way they empty out the tanks looks very inhumane, regardless of what other people comment, saying that it's the best way to change water, etc etc. I still think it's petty and stressful for the fish. But, I could be wrong.

[flash=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/v/YWMnPZKJWaE" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true[/flash]
 

pbmax

Active Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

As far as the water changes go, they way I figure it, if it stressed the fish terribly then it would probably impact their health significantly. It's not like they live in a carefully maintained aquarium in the wild or anything - life can get pretty tough out there.

As far as the drugging - just to play devil's advocate, is it better to net them normally when transferring them and risk injury from flopping around and such? Which is actually more stressful to the fish?

But yes, tossing them in like that is a bit over the top. There's no reason they can't be gentle with them.
 

gnats

New Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

The videos were so upsetting that couldn't get myself to watch even half of them. I know that things are done differently on a commercial level BUT...:no: 

Reaffirms my desire to buy local and from people I know when possible. :) 
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

I thought this was interesting. At 1st I felt the same way as you all did, then kind of realized that they do this on a pretty big scale. Discus are fragile creatures that hold high value. To us this looks rough & inhuman but in reality these ppl seem professional & know exactly how to manhandle these delicate fish without harming them. You know that this is someone's business (livelyhood) and these fish at this size cost about $40 USD each.

Just my opinion...
 

Lamental Jester

New Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

All I know is I'd probably wanna be drugged too if I was gonna be handled like that. Thats pretty bad
 

pbmax

Active Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

theChad said:
I thought this was interesting. At 1st I felt the same way as you all did, then kind of realized that they do this on a pretty big scale. Discus are fragile creatures that hold high value. To us this looks rough & inhuman but in reality these ppl seem professional & know exactly how to manhandle these delicate fish without harming them. You know that this is someone's business (livelyhood) and these fish at this size cost about $40 USD each.

Just my opinion...
Indeed; hurting the fish is not in their best interest. Dead fish or those that die shortly after transport would ruin their business.
 

Cory

Administrator
Staff member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

This is why you guys should make every effort to buy locally produced stock. Keep in mind this is what they wanted to film. The place was cleaned up before they shot this video. Fish farms/wholesalers are basically puppy mills.

If you don't like the treatment on a discus which has a high wholesale value, imagine the treatment on feeder fish.... For that very reason I never carry feeder goldfish etc.
 

pbmax

Active Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

Aquarium Co-Op said:
This is why you guys should make every effort to buy locally produced stock.
Absolutely. But I would argue that buying these is a better idea than buying wild-caught fish.

The problem is that that there just isn't a lot of stock produced locally.
 

Cory

Administrator
Staff member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

You could actually argue both ways. By buying wild you're saving the Amazon. http://opefe.com/piaba.html

By buying local you're saving the world all around. Buying from overseas and not from the wild it's doing the most damage actually.

That's why there are groups now teaching natives etc how to breed fish as opposed to wild catching them. If we simply stop buying fish from the wild, the people who live there lose their jobs and will have to find new work. At the moment this means planting palm trees for palm oil and destroying the forest etc.

It's actually a tricky subject, but at the end of it, the animal treatment is the important part.
 

pbmax

Active Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

If animal treatment is the most important aspect of all of it, then we need to fully understand how the animals respond to treatment like in the video above as well as being wild caught and forced to transition to life in a glass / acrylic box. Given that none of us are fish, that may be a difficult thing to assess. I might ask my uncle about it - he spent his career managing state-run trout and salmon hatcheries in Lewis County.
 

LuminousAphid

New Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

Initially this looks really bad, but when you think about the alternative, it's not that terrible. If they didn't drug the fish, 1. they would be stressed out before they were caught, swimming all over trying to escape, 2. They might injure themselves (like above poster pointed out) while flopping around in the net

When this is your business and not your passion, you can't be expected to take your time with each delicate fish. The throwing them back into the tank was a little rough though, I agree, they could do it just as fast without potentially injuring many of the fish by throwing them into 3" of water.

All things considered (they were in a shitty place to begin with, probably already very stressed, very crowded to say the least), they look OK at the end of the video (I'm not a discus person so maybe this is not true, maybe they look horribly stressed and at the edge of death, I dunno)

Not that I'm advocating buying these fish or supporting this farm; if the way they treat them disturbs you, then by all means, find another source for your fish. I wouldn't buy them just because I like to support local when I can, but it doesn't seem like they are purposely harming or mistreating the fish. They are just trying to handle product as quickly and efficiently as possible with minimal damage. That's all these fish are to the farm: product.

Like Cory said, these are high-value fish, so imagine how things like Otocinclus and smaller-value fish are treated.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

Aquarium Co-Op said:
It's actually a tricky subject, but at the end of it, the animal treatment is the important part.
:plus1: 

We as humans are domesticated beings domesticating other beings. Some we can, other not so much. Fish are a being that can be domesticated but more difficult due to the fact we must create a false ecosystem. I know my fish are line bread in domestication & are satisfied in the environment I created. I keep them in a low stress environment, and mimic their natural habitats as much as possible. In turn I have happy pets that greet me hungry or not :)
 

Anthraxx

New Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

technically netting fish is more damaging then ppl think. i think this may be the reason its posted all over WDFW that you should never net a fish you plan on possibly throwing back. even in the wild they just dont take to nets like one might imagine. definitely agree on the flopping thing, there has got to be a better way then just simply dropping them into 6 inches of water..
 

pbmax

Active Member
Re: This made me disgusted and furious!

That's a good point - I practice this when fishing. If you're not going to keep it, grab it in the water and pull the hook out there, don't net it.
 
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