by Randi J Task

Created on: May 08, 2009

I've kept a number of aquaria as a child and don't agree that aquarium keeping is necessarily cruel. However, the commercialization of the aquarium trade and worse, its globalization add several unintended ill effects to the fish in the aquarium, and the wider environment in general.

Fresh water aquaria are better than marine aquaria. Marine aquariums can encourage more cruelty for the following reasons: Marine fish are not as easily bred as freshwater fish, so they may be stolen from the sea - you may have seen Finding Nemo, a Disney Pixar film. Stealing fish and corals from the sea may involve cyanide poisoning of sea fish. Generally, corals and other invertebrates taken from the sea will die and several fish, subject to aquarium collections may become endangered. Has your marine aquarium retailer explained to you how they got their fish?

With regards to globalization, many tropical fish, both fresh and marine are caught in the wild and shipped by air to retailers. Again, wild fish stocks are put under threat from aquarium collecting, thousands of fish die in transit and wild stocks may become very rare.

Thanks to aquaria, several species have been introduced to foreign environments, and some of these invading aliens can harm the environments to which they are inadvertently introduced. The red eared terrapin, or slider, exported in large numbers from southern US states has now established breeding colonies in countries like Sri Lanka. It competes with native terrapins and predates local fish. Worse than this is a fish Plecostomus, the bony, cleaner fish. This can grow very large (about 1 foot) and can attack native fish. In Sri Lanka where it is non native, fishermen hate it. It is a fish that is totally inedible to most fish eating predators including humans. People in states like Florida will doubtless be aware of other uninvited guests spreading into streams and rivers thanks to the aquarium trade. Fortunately, many tropical fish simply can't colonize temperate environments, and the tropical environments remain the most vulnerable to temperate and non-native, tropical species.

There are also issues of cruelty in maintaining aquarium fish including cleaning, oxygen levels, salt concentrations, feeding, predation, sizes of aquaria and stocking to be taken into consideration. Education can generally help with lots of good books on how to keep fish happy, not just the owners. Commoner, low maintenance pet fish like goldfish or guppies can be better bets for young children compared to more exotic and higher maintenance, potentially scarcer varieties.

If adequately regulated with fish ideally sourced from captive bred populations and selected on the basis that their escape to the wild is either impractical or not an issue for concern, aquarium keeping can be a fine hobby. But people who get sold on a glowing, glittering marine aquarium will soon find that it is more trouble than it's worth and if anything has to give it will have to be the fish (as fish conservationist Charles Clover has said).

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