Scavengers

[serenissima]

One of my fish was ill on Wednesday: I arrived home to find that one of the glow-light tetras could not maintain a horizontal position. It stayed at the bottom of the tank and sort of wobbled around on its tail, achieving a 45-degree angle at best. I withheld food on Thursday in hopes that the problem would resolve on its own. Friday was no better. I continued not to feed, and I decided to quarantine the unhealthy fish Saturday morning. This morning came and went, and I didn't feel up to removing the fish from the tank. There really is no painless way to euthanize a fish that I know of.

I finally got a bowl from the cupboard and moved to isolate the fish half an hour ago. Turns out waiting so long had already made the determination for me: my shrimp have eaten the guts out of the little carcass. I netted it out anyway. When I inverted the net and tried to drop the body in the toilet, the tail snagged on the net and I had to pick it off. Ugh.

I'm such a wuss.

Comments

[aristeros.livejournal.com]

You can get to the next level if you 'mercy-kill' the fish by biting its head off.

[403.livejournal.com]

There really is no painless way to euthanize a fish that I know of.

There's always the possibility of taking the fish out (into a seperate container of water) and putting it in the freezer? I don't know what it feels like for fish, but I've read that freezing to death is painless for humans.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Death by hypothermia may be painless, but being cold is not. I would rather die of heat stroke and dehydration, because being cold makes me miserable, but I can tolerate heat well enough.

[aristeros.livejournal.com]

Heat stroke/exhaustion--I've come close a few times, but never had the pleasure--isn't terrible, but extended dehydration is pretty darn uncomfortable. The trick would be, I think, to get the body temperature up quickly enough that you just pass out.

Overall, though, I think I'd prefer a stroke to freezing to death, too.

This does not mean I advocate frying the hypothetical fish on a griddle, however. ;)

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

The last time I contemplated killing a fish, I read this thread:
http://www.aquahobby.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=22486

Here's a pertinent excerpt:

"I once had to put down a betta, and on recommendation put the betta in a small amount of water in the freezer. I needed to get something else out a while later and did not encounter a peacefully resting betta which had been slowly cooling comfortably, but a frantically thrashing betta, coiling and recoiling his body. I took him back out and went and bought some clove oil. If we put the fish in the freezer and go back several hours later, we have no idea if it was a 'good death' or 'bad death.' It is only by observing the fish that we can see if there is any distress or not. I don't think the betta's distress was from ice crystals, as there was just a little ice starting to form on the surface of the water. I don't think his body had started to freeze. I think he was just very, very uncomfortable, and that is what I wanted to avoid. It seemed to me that it would be better to let nature take its course than to freeze a betta to death.

Coldwater/temperate fish tend are said to go into a sort of dormant state as the water cools, and I read that freezing is acceptable for these fish becasue their metabolism is designed to close down slowly as the temperature drops. Tropical fish don't have the same mechanism. This is what I have read."

Even the clove oil, which is supposed to be an anesthetic, has doubters. I think my preferred method is just to quarantine the fish and wait and see what happens.

[403.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I'll remember that quote, too.