Re: NANFA-- biological bombs detonating everywhere

DasArm_at_aol.com
Sat, 5 Aug 2000 17:00:43 EDT

In a message dated 8/3/00 9:26:25 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ichthos_at_charm.net
writes:

<< Bluegills -- as with many other natives -- don;t have the appeal of
"exotic"
(and therefore more desirable) fishes. Most fish keepers (who are not
hobbyists,
to borrow J.R.'s excellent distinction), want something "exotic" and "fancy"
and
from a faraway place. A bluegill? Heck, I can catch them with my kid down at
the
pond. They're for the pan, not the aquarium. What would I want with a plain
ol'
bluegill? >>

One thing I wanted to say about this is that when I used to live in a "party
house" where people used to go to all of the time, I had a lot of people
coming over who wanted to see my fish. A lot of them thought that it was cool
and unique that I kept native fishes in an aquarium, one of which was a
bluegill. The very fact that the only place which these people had seen these
fishes was struggling on the end of a hook interested them. None of these
people had ever seen these fish swimming around in an aquarium before. So it
was a novelty in that respect. There were a few people that kind of seemed to
think that "Oh, they're from around here, therefore they're boring compared
to fishes from a different continent"; but even they liked the northern pike
which I kept (and would not keep anymore because they get too big even in an
aquarium; this was when I was ignorant of that fact). Some of them would use
disparaging (and ultimately senseless) terms such as "creek" or "ditch" fish-
like there aren't ditches or creeks in tropical areas where some of these
store-bought fishes would be caught in.
I think that another put-off for some non-native fish-inclined people would
be that since some of these fishes were caught for free instead of bought at
a store, they have no value.To me that's a moot point, since a of these
fishes can't be found in a pet store, such as sticklebacks, that makes them
all the more valuable to me. I find these fishes to be interesting in
appearance and habits and since the only way to get any is to catch them,
that's what I'm going to do. You're not always guaranteed to find them
either, so that makes them inaccessible at times and thus more valuable.
And many sculpins are not only interesting in appearance and habits, some of
them are more expensive to maintain than tropicals, once you figure in the
cost of purchasing and running a chiller and the equiptment to create more
current and oxygen.

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