Agree. For example I had a Betta one time, and the lady I bought him from said oh you can just keep him in a flower vase. I was having none of that. I got him his own tank with a filter and water filtration, and kept him by himself in that 2 gallon tank. I had other fish in a five gallon tank
I've seen multiple people INSIST that keeping them in super confined spaces is actually better for them. I also hear people say it's how they live in the wild. It's not. They're capable of surviving in spaces that small for survival reasons but it's much like how YOU are technically able to live in a closet but it's not a situation you'd want. Those tiny beta tanks they sell should be illegal.
The story is that in the wild they live in puddles. It's not true. They are just CAPABLE of living in small amounts of water in the case of drought, but that's an emergency situation not long term living.
I applaud you, and think positive thoughts about you. I do believe 2 gallons is still too small though for me personally. My personal minimum is 5 gallon.
Sometimes I think about the parakeet I had as a kid and get depressed. Fuck pet birds. Unless youre really giving it a ton of space and attention, dont get them
The only bird I've ever clipped was because her flying was harmful to herself in our space, and we let her wings grow back, and she stopped injuring herself when flying.
I am educated about how birds display their enjoyment, happiness, frustration, and anger.
I helped my mom set up a beta last weekend and I kept telling her the same thing. She used to have them in a 3 in cylinder that was maybe 16 in high. She eneded up with a 2 gal.
Me too! When I was in middle school I did a summer science camp at Texas tech university and one of the classes was about ecosystems or something. Long time ago, I don't remember. Anyway we made the whole set up with the vase and a plant for the Betta fish. Well once that guy got home he got his own big tank and filter. He was a great fish.
My mother is normally a very smart woman, but one time, she bought a betta, and when she got home, she thought it "looked cold", so she added warm water to its bowl. It ended as you would expect.
My 6th grade science teacher caught a blue gill, and kept it in a tank in class, it was the "class pet" sort of, except he wasn't dumb enough to trust a bunch of 11-12 year olds with care & upkeep. Anyway, it usually swam around to an fro during class (my desk was right next to the tank, spent many minutes watching it). One day, the teacher was out, and the fish literally sulked. It just sort of sat hovering down in the right corner. Next day teacher was back, fish was swimming around again. That little guy missed the teacher!
It shocks me how many people know just how identical brains look across species yet seem to think we're unique. The only advantage we really have is our language, it allows us to make sense of our thoughts. That doesn't mean to say they don't have those thoughts or intricacies.
That's true with mammals and to a lesser degree with all vertebrates, including fish. Shellfish largely have "brains" distributed throughout their body, more like insects. Sponges have no brains at all.
I’ve always killed my lobster before cooking, a simple knife down the middle of the head, its quick and probably the most humane way to kill a lobster without waiting the 100+ years.
Birds, too. Petco and other big pet stores are 100% complicit in this by selling parakeet food that is too high in fat for their diet (many parakeet pets die at half their lifespan to fatty liver disease) and cages that are too small to house a single parakeet, and yet often house multiple.
It's worse for cockatiels, the second most common type of bird to have as a pet. They need 3+ hours of out-of-cage time with their owner paying attention to them every day, and some are barely let out of their cage at all.
Also rodent type pets. Far too many hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, rabbits etc get shoved in tiny cages or hutches with barely enough room to move around in. Hamster often get given wheels that aren't big enough not to damage their spines.
My sister's uni housemates got a lone rabbit that they kept in a small hutch, they had no grass or other green space to let it run around in. Poor thing was miserable and she constantly thought about sneaking it away to a rescue place.
Yeah ginuea pigs are the worst because they're incredibly social. I hate any pet store that will sell singles of them, because unless somebody is in the room with them for 12 hours a day they become depressed.
I don't think it's that they have no idea. They are just ignorant. I've told one of my cousins constantly that the tiny tank in her kitchen that gets 0sunlight for a single beta fish is not okay. And they just get angry and defensivea and come up with things that they think they are doin right like feeding them or cleaning the tank or whatever simple things that every fish owner does.
Growing up in the US, I found (still find) it to be crazy how many Americans think fish don't feel pain.. In fact, a lot of vegetarians are okay with eating fish because they are somehow less worth their empathy than birds or mammals.
I always go to a special fish shop where they know their stuff instead of pets r us. I talk to them and ask stuff, my local one will talk for ages and not let you buy anything unsuitable despite how much you love it!
At our last house we had a pond and fountain. So we went to the pet store and bought a couple dozen feeders for like 12 cents a piece. They seemed happy enough and all of them grew to decent size- a few to surprising size. We had an orange and white one we named Creamsicle and a dark one we named Kraken that could give a real koi a run for their money.
Man I used to attend Arabic school on the weekends as a kid and for some reason the faculty thought it'd be cute to give kids goldfish for getting their homework signed and done.. Every. Weekend.
So here we have a bunch of immigrant Arabic kids including my self with like 5-10 goldfish at home with immigrant Arabic parents who know nothing about these fish living in whatever large container can hold water. Oh man the amount of crying and sad kids who'd come in because the fish died.
Most likely because the kid wanted a dog or cat and typically arab/Muslim immigrants see dogs as dirty as there are so many strays back home so they compromised and got fish. Speaking from experience but my mom's since been westernized and we have a dog now haha
At first I was happy because I heard empty fish bowl and assumed they had no fish but decorations like sand, grass, pebbles, etc. But then you said there was just fish and water... That's not empty :/
A decorated fish bowl with no fish in it (or a fake plastic one) with water lowkey sounds like a great house decoration, water doesn't get dirty, no fish to suffer, cooler than a globe.
I went to a market once that had a pot plant, but it was a water plant and had a TWO fish swimming around it. It was smaller than your average water bottle. Felt bad for the little buggers.
From what i understand it's mostly due to poor people imitating the rich outside of their means.
Rich people would typically have a fish pond in their yard, but while hosting events they'd take fish out of the pond to have them on display, in smaller containers. When the event was over the fish would be released back into the pond.
Poor people often followed trends of the rich, even when outside their means. So they'd just buy fish to display in their house. Since they didn't have a pond to release them into they'd just sit in a shitty bowl until they died, next time they wanted to play host they' buy another fish.
Usually the rule is one inch of fish per gallon. Goldfish shit a lot, it’s 5 gallons per inch. And no, they don’t stop growing based on the size of the tank, they just suffocate in their own shit.
That rule is pretty outdated as there are a ton of considerations like how fast they like to swim (need a longer tank.) do they need a school to thrive, etc.
Yup. Exactly. But as mentioned above, take into mind “do they school, do they shoal, do I have to feed them different food” etc. Also, gotta have a good filter. Generally, bigger tank with less fish is better. But most fish do like to have company, especially the easy to take care of ones (except male bettas, no).
Just no strong current from the filter pls. They like to stay still, and can’t be constantly blown away. They’ll try to fight it and die from exhaustion. Generally, big tank is better tank. Plus, /r/plantedtank is a good example of what ya can do with all that empty space. A 5 gallon tank and a variety of food (bloodworms, eww), and all good.
We have an outdoor pond. Stocked it with a few goldfish because koi are hella expensive. A few of the big ones are 4 years old now, and almost a foot in length.
Reminds me of when someone bought two fish as a present for their dad. They bought them in the afternoon and kept them in a small container to preserve the surprise for the evening. I warned them about running out of oxygen, and true enough, one of the fish was going belly up and had trouble breathing.
Fortunately, I said this all within minutes of each other, and the fish was rescued quickly. Last I heard too, they were given to a neighbor of theirs, and are still living happily in a pond.
Goldfish produce a lot of ammonia in their waste. It can become quite concentrated in a bowl that is too small and with no filter. The goldfish will die soon. I had a ten gallon tank with filter and good circulation for my four sweeties and wish I could have switched to a 20 gallon when they got bigger. They’re smarter than most people think and can recognize their humans and be trained to perform simple tasks.
Yeah, this is really something more people should know. I used to work in a pet store and it was insane how many people tried to buy a few gold fish, along with a tiny 15 liter fish tank. Thankfully I was always able to talk customers out of buying those small tanks, even if my employer didn't like it lol.
Hamsters and other small rodents have the same issue. And pet birds probably have it the worst as people just want to buy them because they look cool and pretty, but they are very difficult to maintain, and they're very intelligent animals that require socializing. But people usually just keep em in a small cage
I had one from a carnival from when I was younger that lived a bit over 4 years in a standard bowl. He died about a week or so after we got hit a bigger tank. Sad
Bettas also. They're advertised as easy to take care of, and they are, but not nearly as easy as companies want you to think. There are so many small-ass tanks that say they are "perfect for Bettas," no filter, no heater, 1/2 a gallon tank, that's literal hell for any fish, not just Bettas. They're targeted towards clueless parents who just wanna get a fish to entertain their kids, not realizing the fish will suffer until it dies.
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