Ok, I am new to having fish. I currently have two 10 gal tanks since xmas. one has 3 white skirt tetras and 3 platies. The other has a blue gourami and a crayfish. I have been reading on alot of different sites and learned a bunch. That is what responsible people do when they get a pet. I saw an ad today on craigslist that I couldn't resist. A 10 gal tank all of the equipment and "some" guppies free to good home. So I called the fellow. On the phone he tells me that he has very rare guppies. This I must see. So I grab a friend who is my resident fish expert as she is getting her degree in fisheries and we go to retrieve my new tank and rare guppies. What we found upon arriving was shocking. "some" guppies was a gross understatement. There were easily 100+ fish living in this 10 gal tank. Which appeared to have NEVER been cleaned. You could smell this tank from a mile away. The lights don't work and neither did the heater. The "rare" fish were SEVERELY deformed due to rampant inbreeding. It was a horrifying genetic science experiment sitting right here in this guys house and he had no clue. We took his goods anyway so as to at least rescue them from him. We came home and filled an old 2.5 gal tank with water and began to fish them out. Then we fished out the most deformed ones that could barely swim and flushed them since the LFS didn't want them to use as food. I kept 6 cute ones to put in my tanks and then we called around to everyone we know that may want guppies. We found homes for all. Suitable ones with people who know how many fish to keep in a tank. As for his scary tank...we have to tackle that tomorrow as rehoming these guppies took all afternoon. I am soooo mad. How can someone let this go on and never think to ask for help when it got overwhelming?
Craigslist Debacle
- Thread starter wamack
- Start date
In the future a more peaceful form of euthenasia is to place a bowl of water in the freezer till it ices over on top. Take it out and break a hole through the ice and place the poor fish in it. It is an almost instant death for tropicals. If I had seen that I don't know how I would have reacted. The ASPCA doesn't respond to fish abuse calls last I heard. What is so sad is that this fellow probably had no idea he was doing anything wrong. 
That is an easy to happen problem when people get fish like guppies. They just don't stop breeding and fish stores rarely want anty more, since they already have more than enough to sell.
Another thing you need to read about is a topic called OTS, or old tank syndrom. Fish can adapt to very poor tank conditions and when they have their home cleaned after a long time of bad water they can easily go into shock and die. A slow cleaning method is generally the safest way to get them back into good clean water.
It is sad that people let their tanks get into that state.
Another thing you need to read about is a topic called OTS, or old tank syndrom. Fish can adapt to very poor tank conditions and when they have their home cleaned after a long time of bad water they can easily go into shock and die. A slow cleaning method is generally the safest way to get them back into good clean water.
It is sad that people let their tanks get into that state.
awww you couldve made someone a guppy necklace... j/k
But yea if you say how inhumane he treated his fish, you flushing them down the toilet would be/could be on that same scale..
Also must understand, there are plenty fish keepers out there who dont know much about the fish they are getting, they think ooh theres 20 of them in a 10g tank in the store so one will be fine in their 10g, and a few months down the road that one little fish is stuck wall to wall in the tank.. There had been many ads on CL regarding this problem.. cant do much
Well just glad you got yourself a new tank and gave some friends free guppies..
WELCOME TO AC!!!!!!!!!
But yea if you say how inhumane he treated his fish, you flushing them down the toilet would be/could be on that same scale..
Also must understand, there are plenty fish keepers out there who dont know much about the fish they are getting, they think ooh theres 20 of them in a 10g tank in the store so one will be fine in their 10g, and a few months down the road that one little fish is stuck wall to wall in the tank.. There had been many ads on CL regarding this problem.. cant do much
Well just glad you got yourself a new tank and gave some friends free guppies..
WELCOME TO AC!!!!!!!!!
As your crayfish gets bigger, there is a good chance it will eat your gourami. I have a crayfish and had to put her in her own tank... just to give you a heads up, you'll want to but the crayfish in a tank w/ no fish. Welcome to AC, sorry to hear about the misleading ad and the bad condition the fish were in... I agree w/ previous posters about a slower acclimation to new tank as well as better method of euthanizing, though good thing you saved some of them
wow, you guys are right about flushing them, it was pretty thoughtless. But they really did need to be euthanized, at the rate they had been breeding who knows how many were already pregnant with more deformed fish. In the future I'll ask here before I do something drastic. If I end up with fry from the few I kept is it ok to feed them to my gourami and crayfish? I don't want to have the same issue as the guy I got them from you know? As for separating the crayfish...once I am done cleaning that wretched "free" tank that got me into this mess I will have one available. So is there anything that can live with my gourami? The whole reason I have 2 tanks is because he was trying to eat all of my smaller fish so I had to separate him. (I say him but I don't actually know) Before the crayfish I had a second gourami that was a little bigger he killed but did not eat that one. Is he doomed to live alone? Seems like alot of space for one little fish.
