You are absolutely right. Education beats legislation. Banning of
"goldfish bowls" would also prevent the keeping of the Betta, which
prefers, even thrives in, the confines of a bowl.
I have been in the pet shop business (and a rainbow hobbyist) for almost
20 years. We used to give coupons for a "free goldfish"to the local
fairs as prizes. When the winner would come in to claim their prize we
would do our best to sell them on a Betta. The benefit of the coupon,
though, is the same principal retailers use when they give a rebate.
Only a small percentage of the winners actually claim the fish. Out of
the 500 coupons that we would usually give out, maybe 50 would be
redeemed, and 10 or 20 of those could be talked into buying a Betta and
the necessary accessories. Often after the goldfish died, they would
return for something "longer-lived". This is a strategy that give a
local fish store the ability to make more money, so i don't understand
why most of them have not adopted a similar policy.
Use of the word "ban" on such a ubiquitous item as a goldfish bowl is
certainly excessive.
mike
Does bowl equal aquarium. How big is a bowl. Careful Andrew, I think the
intent of the bunny huggers is to stop you keeping pets all together. I
put Blue-eyes in 200 litre water lily bowls on my front verandah to eat
mozzies. I know what you mean by bowl but there are those out there hell
bent on stopping you keeping that nice fish you have in any
aquarium/bowl at all. Education is way better than legislation. If you
are dead set against goldfish in bowls you should prove to all those
buying little bowls and big goldfish that what they do is not nice for
the goldfish. If a law in Australia was passed banning goldfish in bowls
the NT Govt would interpret that to include all aquarium fish in any
water anywhere. In Darwin I can only keep one New Guinea species of fish
legally. In the NT you can only keep NT Native fish and most of the
species on the allowable import fish except Oscars. The recent 6 species
added by DEH Minister Ian Campbell have been banned here in the NT.
Australian native Pacific Blue-eyes are a prohibited import here in the
NT. My advice is be very careful when siding with fanatics who have an
agenda much bigger than yours. Dave On 26/10/05 9:15 PM, "Christophe
Mailliet" <christophe.mailliet at web.de> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Andrew,
>>
>> Good on you for that!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Christophe
>>
>> r_m_l at yahoogroups.com schrieb am 26.10.05 13:35:12:
>>
>> Hi fiesta,
>>
>> I've been subtly trying to ban goldfish bowls for years :)
>>
>> In an interesting moment last week I applied for a part-time position at
>> one of the local pet shops - apart from a bit of cash to supplement the
>> 'writing career', I was also after some human contact. One of the
>> reasons I did not get the job was, I believe, a statement I made about
>> the abject uselessness of anything smaller than a 100 litre tank for
>> keeping goldfish. Bad for business, I guess. If being in the pet trade
>> means I have to actively promote cruelty then I will sleep better if I
>> am not part of it.
>>
>> Best regards, Andrew
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