caught in george bush park pleco

[mahoro]

if you go on some of the local saltwater fishing fourm, couple years back there was quite a few of us fisherman catching pleco in the salts, very weird... i snag mine by the tail...

[Mzungu]

I agree. The problem is that people will buy what they want to buy, and if a store is making money off of a certain kind of fish, they'll re-stock it. I wish that conscientious people could be behind ordering fish for sale and selling fish responsibly, but unfortunately that's not the case. It's sad, but it's reality. All we can do is keep trying, and continue to spread the word. :)

[TaTeR ToT]

I don't know where this is, but this video is incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqgjgN7HIig

One day a year or so ago, I looked at the fish for sell at a PetSmart store. The majority of the fish grew to too large a size for the average aquarium. Why they put these fish on the market when there are equally beautiful alternatives that do not grow so large is beyond me. Even if I had wanted to buy a fish from there, they simply did not offer anything small enough for even my 75g tank.

Clown loaches are also a fish I cannot understand why it's so commonly offered. There are many excellent alternatives that do not grow so large. I had to look for a very long time to get a shoal of Zebra Loaches (Botia striata; found them at HAW), and while Fish Ranch II now has Dwarf Chain Loaches (Yasuhikotakia sidthimunki), when I bought mine a couple of years ago, they were no where to be found locally. I had to ship them in.

If nothing else, there should be some kind of warning required for these large fish, ensuring that people understand just how big they get and that releasing them in the wild is not a viable option. I think a lot of people do it because they don't know better.

+1!

for example, the red belly pacus that are sold at vertually every petsmart!
its hilarious, because petsmart clearly states on the info tag about the pacus that they grow to 24"tl, but it also states that they can be kept ina 30g tank
lets see, a 36x13x16 tank with a 24x16x4 fish in it, yeah i dont think that will work well