View Full Version : bad to release a full size oscar into a pond?
just wondering, would it survive if you put it in say like a big deep pond in NY, because Ive heard of people doing this when they get too big for their tanks.
fishfood
12-14-2003, 7:07 PM
Do not release any aquarium fish into the wild! Most places this is illegal since they are a non native species. Take is to a fish store instead. A full size oscar will probably sell fairly quickly.
marsupialvomit
12-14-2003, 8:09 PM
yeah didn't you ever hear about the problem down in florida with the snakefish (or something like that) those non native *******s are reeking havok.
i know i know, i took marine bio i know about the zebra shells getting into the ships ballast and then released into the lakes and blah blah, im just wondering if they could actualy survive the winter?? i work at a fish store, we sell them like hot cakes for 20 dollars , foot longers are almost the same price as the babies because we get them in all the time, too big for yer 10 gallon eh? ok well take it.. some college kid will buy it and impress his girls by feeding it
basenjib123
12-15-2003, 2:22 AM
Oscars will not survive NE winters. Plus, as stated its illegal to release them. Even if it was not illegal its a very irresponsible thing to do.
PumaWard
12-15-2003, 6:33 AM
Not to mention that the natives would tear it to pieces before long.
i think it would be funny to go down to some pond and look in and see guppys
OrionGirl
12-15-2003, 8:33 AM
This statement is not intended to encourage the release of aquarium fish into bodies of water.
Lakes and ponds within cities almost always contain many non-native fish. A pond here in town has 2-3 foot koi--and they most certainly survive the winters. If the water does not freeze solid or winter kill, hardy fish will survive. Wyoming does not have any tropical zones, but there are jack dempseys, mollies and guppies thriving in waters locally. Most are in thermal springs, but the temp still drops below 60 regularly, and these released fish thrive. The fact that they survive is secondary to why is should not be done--aquarium fish can introduce diseases and parasites into the wild, with devestating consequences. If you want to see tropical fish in ponds and streams, travel to their native countries and see them at their best.
ill bet in the future, instead of dropping bombs on our enemies, well drop non native fish into their lakes and streams, boy that will make em mad!
marsupialvomit
12-18-2003, 2:28 PM
if you don't wnat the oscar you can donate it...to me.
pinballqueen
12-18-2003, 2:42 PM
Originally posted by Hans
ill bet in the future, instead of dropping bombs on our enemies, well drop non native fish into their lakes and streams, boy that will make em mad!
While the sarcasm is appreciated in this comment... it's not really a laughing matter.
Non-native species drive native species to extinction via introduction of parasites, diseases, aggression, and competition for resources.
Keep in mind that in the wild, an oscar would be competing for the same food as a speckled perch (rock bass, crappie, whatever you wanna call it). I know this because I have caught an oscar while I was speck fishing in our local lake. Since oscars will GREATLY oversize a speck and grow much faster, and if other people got it in their heads to release their overgrown oscars into the local waterway, it is reasonable to think that the oscar population would outcompete the speck population and their numbers would reduce over time. Introducing ANY new predator into an environment can greatly impact the entire ecosystem in a negative manner. The same can be said of rapidly-growing non native plants as well. Anyone who has been in southern appalachia or knows what kudzu is knows what I am talking about. They don't call it mile-a-minute for nothin....
DeVitaf
12-18-2003, 2:55 PM
Originally posted by Hans
ill bet in the future, instead of dropping bombs on our enemies, well drop non native fish into their lakes and streams, boy that will make em mad!
It seems that our military is a step ahead of you in our non traditional war tactics. I just grabbed this graphic from CNN. The infestation has begun. It is only a matter of time before they are over run with ICH and Fishy tuberculosis...
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-9/393665/DeathFromAbove.JPG
JSchmidt
12-18-2003, 3:27 PM
A parachutin' Oscar... that's a hoot! Nice one!
Jim
Dabbler II
12-18-2003, 4:29 PM
I don't think he was asking if he could release an oscar into the wild I think he was wondering if it would surive the winter in a privite pond
elcano
12-18-2003, 7:13 PM
We have truck loads of carp in our local dam here in Sydney.
It's actually illegal to put them back if you catch one (which you will). A great law that!
Ever seen a pelical fly away from a fish being thrown at it? Ahahah!
:laugh:
basenjib123
12-19-2003, 1:26 AM
Carp, Goldfish, Koi, etc. are obviously "cold water fish", thus they can and do survive NE waters quite well ...Oscars are tropical fish, Oscars are not going to survive a winter in the Northeast United States period.
OrionGirl
12-19-2003, 8:20 AM
Care to take a bet on that one? Would you say that mollies and guppies are tropical too? Yes, oscars native waters stay much warmer than most our northern waters. However, there are many lakes and streams that have thermal heating--and tropical fish can survive in these handily. Lakes and ponds in towns tend to stay warmer than those out in the country, and tropicals frequently survive these as well.
Not to mention, there are many states up here that do not have cold winters--waters drop in temp, but never freeze over, and fish survive in these easily. Heck, aren't oscars now classed as a game fish in Florida due to releases that resulted in reproducing populations?
Originally posted by OrionGirl
Heck, aren't oscars now classed as a game fish in Florida due to releases that resulted in reproducing populations?
http://www.floridaconservation.org/fishing/updates/oscar.html
Here is one quote from the artical that is interesting:
Oscars are one of two dozen or more "exotic" species known to reproduce in our waters, but are confined to south Florida's sub-tropical and tropical habitat due to temperature requirements. Shafland said they cannot tolerate chills that dip below 54-degrees F.
Another quote showing how quickly they can populate an area:
"Catches exceeding three fish per day were unknown prior to 1983," said Shafland.
"By 1985, however, some anglers were catching as many as 50 to 100 oscars per day."
And yet one more quote. Looks like they aren't classified as game fish so people can catch and eat as many as they want:
Since the oscar has become a permanent Florida fixture, instead of cussing yet another exotic that has taken root, let's learn to adapt to this "invader" and enjoy both its outstanding sporting and eating qualities. Especially since all the oscars we catch and eat will help reduce any potential deleterious environmental affects they might otherwise have, which is one reason the FWC lists them as a "non-game" species and allows unlimited harvest (no size or bag limits apply).
OrionGirl
12-19-2003, 8:44 AM
Good quotes! Guess game vrs non-game is a matter of state law semantics--in WY, a game fish is any fish that is caught with the intent to consume other than carp/sucker fish.
There are many waters that don't get below 54...Not many in Maine, nor in Wyoming, but they certainly exist in the south and southwest.
basenjib123
12-19-2003, 11:25 AM
I should have taken that bet:D !
OrionGirl
12-19-2003, 11:32 AM
Not really--the fish could very easily survive in town ponds. There are thermal springs all over, as well.
125gJoe
12-19-2003, 3:26 PM
Isn't that cruel dropping "dirty Oscars" -- infected with PoPeye into Iraq!?
:eek: :D
In the U.S., Oscars can live outdoors (ponds, canals, lakes..), below a Latitude of 28 degrees. Above that, it's too cold...
Wippit Guud
12-19-2003, 3:37 PM
In Canada, oscars would be fish food :)
Teddy8030
05-13-2004, 11:26 PM
Originally posted by Hans
ill bet in the future, instead of dropping bombs on our enemies, well drop non native fish into their lakes and streams, boy that will make em mad!
.......funniest thing I've heard in a while......
travelinman1969
05-13-2004, 11:32 PM
I can't believe this one came back to haunt us!! And thanks Teddy, don't look that far back, plz!:rolleyes:
hah when i first read the title i was like omg what a fool of course its bad! oh wait i posted this topic lol
i have learend so much! thank you orion girl!
Dangerdoll
05-14-2004, 7:40 AM
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: that's too funny Hans!
Maryland spent multiple millons of tax dollars on the earlier reproducing snakehead incident. This year already thay have had to drain another pond, as an angler caught another snakehead, more millions down the drain. A branch of the Potomac river in VA near DC had yet another snakehead caught by an angler within the last week. More megabucks will be spent monitoring that watershed.
At least locally, if you get caught introducing non-natives into native waters, you are liable for all clean-up costs - so if you don't have a few million in spare change, do not even think about it.
Releasing non-natives is a wonderful way to get the aquarium hobby banned.
Tropicals can survive and out-compete natives in many areas - downstream of power plants tend to be hot spots, not just for water temps, but for survival and multiplication of non-natives.
Dumping pets of any sort is stupid, malicious, and expensive to all the rest of us - even disregarding the damage to the native species.
Today's Washington Post reported another snakehead caught in a Potomac tributary, this one on the Maryland side, not far cross-river from the area of the prior Virginia catch. If they have established in the river, expect mega-millons in tax dollars to be spent in futile attempts to eradicate them. Those are my tax dollars, and as the Potomac wraps Washington DC, the Fed will get involved so it will be all of our tax dollars blown because some fool had no sense at all.
Veneer
01-14-2005, 8:42 PM
From the last I've heard, it's now been concluded that it's futile to attempt to eradicate snakeheads from the Potomac now that breeding populations have been established within the river proper; they are expected to become a regular fixture of the (already-degraded) ecosystem:
One fish was a worry. Two fish were a troubling trend. Now that the total is up to nine, some scientists say they're close to conceding: The northern snakehead is in the Potomac River, and likely to stay.
This is from http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/InNews/snakeheadhome2004.html, dated June 30, 2005:
Nine times over the past seven weeks, the Asian transplant that can breathe air and scoot slowly over land has been caught in a 14-mile stretch of the Potomac or its tributaries.
Even though eggs and babies - definitive proof of a breeding population - have not been found [Note: they, by now, have: see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6590-2004Oct4.html, scientists say the number of catches and the swath of the river involved suggest that the fish is established in open water that can neither be poisoned nor drained.
"It's time to say, 'Yeah, we have a naturally reproducing population in the system, and they've probably been there for two or three years,' " said John Odenkirk, a fisheries biologist at the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
The arrival of the northern snakehead, a native of China and Korea that feeds chiefly on other fish, has alarmed some scientists, who say it could throw the Potomac ecosystem out of balance.
"It's the first act of the nightmare, if you will," said Mike Slattery, assistant secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
Until those tests come back, or until baby snakeheads are found, some scientists say it's still possible that all of the snakeheads were dumped into the river and none of them were born there.
'A monster' The snakehead was first discovered in the Washington region in 2002, after a man bought a pair of them to make soup, then changed his mind and released the snakeheads into a Crofton pond. They bred, and Maryland state officials eventually used poison to kill the hundreds of baby snakeheads in the pond.
Another snakehead appeared this year in Pine Lake, a fisherman's pond in Wheaton. Again, officials took drastic measures, draining the lake to make sure no others remained.
But then, in early May, a bass fisherman caught one in Fairfax County's Little Hunting Creek - an inlet of the Potomac near Mount Vernon.
As the weeks went on, there were more catches around the Potomac: in Fairfax's Pohick Bay, near Marshall Hall in Charles County, and twice more in Little Hunting Creek. The most recent catch came Sunday in Kane's Creek near Occoquan.
The biggest of them all was caught June 17 in Little Hunting Creek. Cliff Magnus, 44, a woodworker from Waldorf, was practicing for a bass tournament when he saw a large bulge of water pushing through the lily pads.
Magnus cast, and the fish hit. Then things turned ugly.
"He tried to wrap me up in the motor a few times. He tried to swim under the boat a couple times," said Magnus, 44, a woodworking artist from Waldorf. "He put up a big fight, a very good fight."
Magnus hauled out a two-foot-long snakehead, weighing nearly six pounds.
"As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a monster," he said.
Magnus tried to kill the fish by hitting it over the head with a pair of pliers, but gave up after four or five blows. In all, the fish spent more than four hours out of water by the time Maryland Department of Natural Resources officials picked it up at Magnus' home on June 17.
It was still flopping, Magnus said.
Scientists examined bones in the fish's head called otoliths, which grow rings for each year of life. They found at least four in Magnus' fish, making it older than most of the other snakeheads caught in the river.
Magnus' fish had another interesting feature: The last two rings were much bigger than the earlier ones. Scientists said this likely indicates that the fish had lived in captivity and then been released into the food-rich environment of the Potomac.
'High on the hog' "The last few years when it was wild it was living high on the hog," Odenkirk said.
In all, scientists say that the nine Potomac snakeheads represent three different generations: Some are 2 years old, some are 3, and at least two of the fish are 4 or older.
Since the northern snakehead has not taken hold anywhere else in the United States, scientists have only a vague idea of how it might behave if a breeding population were established in the Potomac.
This much is certain, according to Walter R. Courtenay Jr., a snakehead expert with the U.S. Geological Survey: The breed would not be able to spread downstream into the Chesapeake Bay because snakeheads cannot deal with salty water. The fish also could not make it above the rapids at Great Falls, a few miles upstream from Washington, he said.
In between, there are plentiful fish that a snakehead might feed on - including gizzard shad, white perch and pumpkinseed sunfish - plus the young of species like rockfish or largemouth bass.
In 10 or 20 years, Courtenay said, it's possible that there will be enough snakeheads to affect the populations of some of these or to crowd out native predators. That has some fishermen very worried.
"It's scary, it really is. I've heard they can really devastate a river," said Bill Bennington, 42, who was drying off his bass boat at the Sweden Point Marina in Charles County. "If they get established, they'll eat everything in their path."
Other fishermen, though, see the alien species as a challenge.
Already, there is a snakehead fishing tournament scheduled for July, and Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World at Arundel Mills in Hanover plans to offer a bounty on northern snakeheads - $10 to $50 gift certificates, depending on the length of the fish.
Doug Stanton, who hooked the eighth Potomac snakehead in Mattawoman Creek on Thursday, compared the snakehead to another of the Potomac's nonnative species, the blue catfish. This transplant from the Midwest now is accepted as one of the Potomac's big-time game fishes.
Today, Stanton said, "you're just going to have days when you catch a lot of catfish."
In the future, he said, "you're going to have days when you catch a lot of snakeheads."
O brave new world!
Steering this back to an aquarium perspective, I strongly urge you to read the article available at http://www.mauricemartin.net/snakeheads.htm, incisively reflecting on the unjust sensationalism (much of which was blown out of proportion to the actual, albeit immense, environmental threat) that spawned the "snakehead panic"; in reading accounts of the drainage of the Crofton pond, I recall initial electroshock surveys to have brought up numerous koi and goldfish, arguably equal to snakeheads in detrimental potential, yet overlooked for their comparative mundanity.