Joy&RaptorsUnrestrained!
01-15-2014, 04:05 PM
Hey guys, I'm usually among the least eco-friendly of the merfolk on here. It's not that I have anything against the environment, but I am a sensualist/hedonist, and I'm lazy and I do things like turning the lights off when I'm not in the room, etc, but after attempting to get a college degree in Environmental Resource Management and being burned out by the chemistry grade requirements (as well as being severely prone to poison ivy, sun poisoning, and mosquito bites), I try to leave nature alone.
I did, however, drop into my favorite pet store from when I was a kid to look at the fish. This shop has provided me with some of my favorite sea creature pets, including chocolate chip stars, serpent stars, seahorses, guppies, and more. While wandering through the store, I spotted a tank full of transparent fish with vivid, brightly colored stripes on their sides. They were dazzling, and I saw that they were referred to as Painted Glass Fish. I made a note on my phone to look them up when I got home... but when I did, I was severely disappointed.
While the transparent bodies of the fish are natural, those stripes are not. In order to sell them to aquarium enthusiasts who are drawn to bright colors, fish breeders inject these "disco fish" with dyes that 1. fade over a couple months, 2. hurts and traumatizes the fish, and 3. can lead to infections and diseases that drastically reduce the fish' four year lifespan.
I felt supremely guilty for even considering buying those fish, guilty for thinking they'd make cool tail designs, guilty for admiring the stripes themselves. I felt disappointed, as if someone had told me that peacock feathers were all painted or tigers were actually just mountain lions that had been dyed or that someone went around gluing unicorn horns on narwhals. And I felt betrayed by a store that I used to love and that gave me some of my favorite pets as a kid. As someone who usually isn't very eco-focused, I was unprepared for the emotional reaction to this treatment of fish. I was likewise appalled to find out that while glass fish are naturally transparent, several other fish species are dyed or injected this way to give them unnatural patterns, and almost all of those ones are (by necessity) albinos to begin with. I did find that some "painted fish" can gain their color from foods with natural dyes in them, like the pink shade that flamingos gain from eating shrimp, but it seemed like the majority of these painted fish instead suffer invasive and harmful dyeing methods instead. Does anyone know more about this phenomenon or advice on how to find more healthily painted fish?
I did, however, drop into my favorite pet store from when I was a kid to look at the fish. This shop has provided me with some of my favorite sea creature pets, including chocolate chip stars, serpent stars, seahorses, guppies, and more. While wandering through the store, I spotted a tank full of transparent fish with vivid, brightly colored stripes on their sides. They were dazzling, and I saw that they were referred to as Painted Glass Fish. I made a note on my phone to look them up when I got home... but when I did, I was severely disappointed.
While the transparent bodies of the fish are natural, those stripes are not. In order to sell them to aquarium enthusiasts who are drawn to bright colors, fish breeders inject these "disco fish" with dyes that 1. fade over a couple months, 2. hurts and traumatizes the fish, and 3. can lead to infections and diseases that drastically reduce the fish' four year lifespan.
I felt supremely guilty for even considering buying those fish, guilty for thinking they'd make cool tail designs, guilty for admiring the stripes themselves. I felt disappointed, as if someone had told me that peacock feathers were all painted or tigers were actually just mountain lions that had been dyed or that someone went around gluing unicorn horns on narwhals. And I felt betrayed by a store that I used to love and that gave me some of my favorite pets as a kid. As someone who usually isn't very eco-focused, I was unprepared for the emotional reaction to this treatment of fish. I was likewise appalled to find out that while glass fish are naturally transparent, several other fish species are dyed or injected this way to give them unnatural patterns, and almost all of those ones are (by necessity) albinos to begin with. I did find that some "painted fish" can gain their color from foods with natural dyes in them, like the pink shade that flamingos gain from eating shrimp, but it seemed like the majority of these painted fish instead suffer invasive and harmful dyeing methods instead. Does anyone know more about this phenomenon or advice on how to find more healthily painted fish?