CONFESSION! I FLUSH FISH!

[Taysius]

I've grown up around two extremes. My mother won't flush a fish unless it is stone cold dead. My grandmother flushes perfectly healthy fish once she tires of them and wants a new fish. (she doesn't have a tank anymore thank goodness.)

I'm sort of in the middle, but far from flushing healthy fish. If there is a fish on the bottom of my tank, laying on it's side then it's surely on it's way out the door. Or down the toilet I guess I should say. It wasn't going to live much longer in my tank so I doubt it lives very long at all in the tubes.

 

[Fresh250]

Good rant Bob...and I agree.

It's relative tho...when you have 3 fish and lose one it's a bigger deal than having 200 and losing one...

:werd:.... i also have to admit, when i had those 60 goldfish to cycle my tank, whenever one died it went out on the compost pile for mother earth/the crows

 

[ksane]

It's not about whether fish feel pain or not. It's the mindset of being able to cold-heartedly flush a live creature down the toilet and tell yourself they don't matter. That's what's concerning.

 

[rithunder916]

I do flush the dead ones...especially in the winter when its just to cold out to dig. However my larger fishies dont' get that treatment...i have the "fishy" grave yard in my back yard....


I do buy meds for the fish and I have a medicine cabinet full of stuff for them, in case of emergency. however I usually won't try if it's one of my cheaper 1$ special fish....i know it sounds cruel but i just don't have the time. If one of my rams is sick, it gets pulled out, dropped into quarenteen and treated...if one of my blood fins gets sick..i treat the whole tank, and hope or the best.


mike

 

[Jill-O]

I confess I do flush dead fish. I know on another forum, that was really looked down on. We have a septic tank and if a fish is dead and not huge, I don't really worry about flushing it. Live ones, though... I just couldn't. If we've got a sick one, I try to fix it up w/ medication.

 

[BioHazard]

Normally I agree with a lot of what you say, Bob, but I have to disagree on this one. A great deal of evidence currently holds that fish do, in fact, feel pain.

The evidence for pain in fish: The use of morphine as an analgesic
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T48-48TMFB5-2&_user=532104&_coverDate=09%2F05%2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1190373672&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000026736&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=532104&md5=a103cc141fe3d3fdf37ac766e9618700

Can fish suffer?: Perspectives on sentience, pain, fear and stress
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T48-4C4X13T-1&_user=532104&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1190384096&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000026736&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=532104&md5=2a31ea0e3b527578d6bbd20df553c38f

Fish and welfare: do fish have the capacity for pain perception and suffering?
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ufaw/aw/2004/00000013/A00101s1/art00012

Cognitive ability and sentience: Which aquatic animals should be protected?
http://www.int-res.com/articles/dao_oa/d075p099.pdf


However, it would be negligent of me to infer that ALL literature infers that fish can feel pain in a meaningful way.

The neurobehavioral nature of fishes and the question of awareness and pain
http://g-feuerstein.com/tl_files/ffi/pdfs/JRose%204-03%20Pain%20Paper.pdf

And this article is an interesting overview, which remains neutral on the subject, but gives some interesting insight.
An evaluation of current perspectives on consciousness and pain in fishes
http://www.aquanet.mun.ca/English/research/fish/rm-perspective.pdf

Scientifically, pain and consciousness are difficult to prove. After all, what is pain without consciousness? But how does one determine consciousness? However, current studies to provide intriguing evidence of self awareness in what we would consider ‘lower life forms’.

So, let us assume, like the scientific community, that we simply don’t know. Fish may be conscious and able to feel meaningful pain, or they may not be conscious, and unable to feel meaningful pain. Or, they could be something in between. After all, who here is truly conscious at all waking hours? I find myself going through the motions rather often.
Even if we are NOT SURE, shouldn’t the possibility of sentience in fish cause us to allow them some degree of concern as to their mental welfare? I may not be certain that my fish feels pain, but when it comes to the options of allowing it the possible suffering of being ‘flushed’ compared to the quick death of clove oil or traumatic injury (ie, stomping or bricking), I would afford it the benefit of the doubt and go with the quick death.

I don’t blame you for not wasting time diagnosing and treating illness. That is difficult, has a somewhat low success rate unless the illness is easily identified or treated, and some medications are expensive.
However, I don’t believe there is an excuse for flushing a live fish, when methods to humanely euthanize said fish are cheap or free, and easy.
This being said, I think that you are a really nice guy at heart, and that the constant influx of newby mistakes, people unwilling to listen, folks who dump 20 goldfish into a 10 gallon tank, etc., has just gotten to you. It would be frustrating to deal with the constant issues that the moderators have to deal with on a daily basis. Plus, you are ALWAYS on the chat room keeping us company, and I know that we get a lot of people on there who are unwilling to listen to sound advice. I really appreciate and enjoy having you around as a voice of moderation and reason, and I hope you will at least reconsider your stance on fish flushing.

 

[Eupterus]

And people get upset with me when I stop treating fish who have health issues for months. I treat sick fish for a long time, but I do have my limits too. Which angers some people.

I think people should wait for fish to die first before flushing them, even if that means give them a bucket with an airstone so they can die somewhat peacefully.

 

[psyche]

A bottle of clove oil or a brick is all it takes to kill them quickly before flushing. Is that really too much trouble?

 

[platytudes]

I don't think you can treat fish for months with antibiotics...I know Metronidazole (Flagyl) builds up toxicity for sure. Feel free to post a separate thread about this Eupterus (if you haven't already) - maybe we can help.

I agree that treating sick fish is often times not successful. It's sort of old school, but I go by the saying "a fish that eats, lives" - if it's eating, I'm willing to keep trying. But if it's not, I figure that it's given up the ghost and it's time to humanely dispose of it. Not for every fish or every circumstance, but usually this is the rule of thumb I follow - especially for cheap $1-2 fish.

 

[CrimsonBlush]

I did it once when i was like 9 or 10, way too young to have a fish tank. And nobody helped me out, so I had an overstocked 10 gallon with no filter and the fish all got ich, so I got all distressed and wound up flushing them. It is not a happy memory for me.

i flushed a live fish back in my newbie days and i still have guilt about it. it swam back up and it had it's back bent in half and i felt like an ars. now if i must get rid of a fish i kill it first. the mistakes you rant about are mostly something newbies do but i'm sure some people just don't care. i dont' really think of my fish as decore. they are my pets and yes, some of them have names. the ones i care about i will go out of my way to save. then there are the smaller schooling fish that seem more interchangable. if one tetra is sick, i do what i have to do to prevent spreading disease to the whole tank.

i bet this thread will turn into quite an interesting debate.

Same I should have known better, but my molly had ton of babies and I only had a 10 gallon!