Cisco Sonar

Fish Biologist Lectured

By Bryce Nielson, Cisco Sonar

I have been a Fishead all my life.  For some unknown reason I have always been intrigued with these scaly, uniquely smelling, cold blooded animals.  I have dedicated my life to fisheries science and angling.  Suffice to say, I really know a lot about fish, or so I thought.

I have always had aquariums since I was a kid.  I raised all types of tropical fish and have seen many of them in the wild while diving.  Each species has unique traits and habits.  The Betas and Barbs are showy and active.  Cichlids are aggressive toward other fish, lots like a green sunfish and are better left alone.  Algae eaters clean the glass in the aquarium and Plecostomus clean up the bottom.  I hate to clean aquariums so I rely on the natural approach.  In the summer there is more heat and light effecting the aquarium so I stopped by PetSmart to get a couple fish.

I love to go in pet stores and look at the fish.  The many varieties and colors and was species are popular.  When I had a large green sunfish I used to buy “feeder” goldfish for him to snap up as soon as they hit the water.  I was waited on by a college aged girl with glasses.  I told her I wanted to Plecostomus which were on sale for a buck apiece.  She looked me up and down and asked me how large of aquarium I was going to put them in.  I said 15 gallons and a look of concern crossed her face.  She felt that was too small for the fish.  Now I know Plecostomus can grow fairly large but typically they are restricted by habitat size.  She wanted to know what I was going to do with them and I told her they are good at keeping the bottom clean and look like sea monsters.  

She perked up and lead to to another aquarium that she said contained a much better fish for that task.  They were also five bucks apiece and I again reiterated I wanted the other two fish.  Sternly she asked me what I was going to do with them if they got too large for my aquarium.  I told her I didn’t know and besides they are only a buck apiece.  She then explained to me that fish were animals, treasured pets and PetSmart needs to know that any animal they sell needs to be taken care of properly.  She again persisted, wanting to know if I had plans of buying a larger tank or had a pond (tropical fish don’t do well with Rich County winters) that I could put them in if they grew larger.  At this point, images were appearing in my head of millions of fish, belly up, that I had poisoned over the years.  If this girl only knew. . . . . .

Now, she had wasted 20 minutes of my time telling me that fish were caring and feeling pets that are gaining in popularity with people.  Then, to justify her thinking, she told about the new Disney movie coming out called Dory.  She didn’t know the actual name of the fish (Pacific Regal Blue Tang).  Since these fish apparently can’t be raised by humans, the pet industry has been slowly been capturing many of them in the wild over a time.   This so they won’t affect the natural population when everyone wants one for their aquarium after seeing the movie.

It’s now a half hour and I comment that PetSmart’s attitude is commendable but I don’t have an anthropomorphic view about animals, so get me the fish.  She did, I paid $2.13 and left wondering what the world is coming to.