Re: NANFA-L-- Releasing native fish back to the wild -- EVER

geoffrey kimber (gkimber2-in-gmail.com)
Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:57:09 -0500

I have moved twice in the last 2 years. Most of the time, I tried to
give my fish away. When I couldn't find homes, I euthanized them
using clove oil.

I had a scare when I was in Lexington that cured me of the desire to
release fish.

Fundulus spp are among my favorites to keep. In Lexington, I had some
of the local blackstrip topminnows (one of the first natives I kept as
an adult) and some starhead minnows from an aquatic garden store in
Indiana.

I went to florida and came home with all sorts of cool topminnows and
other neat things.

The next thing I knew, one of the seminole killies had nasty white
bumps on it's body. I thought it was ich, but it turned out to be
lymphocytosis. Before long, despite my best intentions, every
killifish in the house had lymphocytosis and was euthanized. I
cleaned out tanks, threw out plants and decorations and really had a
bad time of it.

What scared me was that I had a small creek runnning in my back yard
with blackstrip topminnows. I would have hated for this strain of
lymphocytosis to become established and eradicate topminnows in
Jessamine Creek and the Kentucky River.

Now, it may be that nothing would have happened because the wild fish
are not as stressed as the captive fish. Who knows. I'd rather not
find out.

As far as the concern about killing a fish - this has been stated on
this list before - as far as the ecosystem is concerned, you already
killed the fish when you collected it.

Geoff Kimber
Christiana, TN
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