Tattooing Fish?

[Blue Ridge Reef]

Faller, I've seen hermits in painted shells, but never a painted CRAB! Is someone painting the actual crabs now!?!

[waterfaller1]

Well..see one of them showed up at my doorstep a couple years ago. So I kept him for awhile and nursed him back to health. Being as I am, I had to research how to care for them. There is alot to it, and they really are not for children. Anyway, I learned that the practice is to paint the hermit's shell, and most often this adheres the crab. Entombing him and insuring his death. Just another horrid marketing strategy. Sorry for sidetracking the thread.

[Blue Ridge Reef]

Seems like it would be much easier to paint empty shells, allow them to dry, and let a crab move into them before selling them. And yeah, hermit crabs require more care than most people realize.

[Madhun67]

imho i think its bad that most people arent aware that it causes animals discomfort and pain to have them "painted",plus its simply not moral to me.animals cant talk so on the business goes driven by money.seeing bent spines,painted unnatural fish is sad to me.......the fact is they are beautiful as is,so we should just leave them alone.my 2 cents
Dave

[James From Cali]

Every LFS that I been to has had Fruit tetras, Valentine Parrots(or Sweetheart Parrots), Tattooed mollies, Tattoed Parrots. I think its sick. I wouldnt buy or want to go into a store like this but unfortunately for me to stay in the hobby and not order online its a must.

[nonamesleft47]

I don't think the painted shell would bother a hermit as the shell doesn't belong to the crab, it can pull itself out anytime it wants and find a new one. If they painted the crab's back then I could see that.

Years ago they used to paint the shells of baby turtles and sell them at 5 and dime stores. You could buy turtles with your name on it's shell, happy birthday, smiley face, ect. Now this did hurt the turtle as the paint didn't let it shed the old scales from it's shell and it's shell would deform, eventually causing death, not that many of them lived that long.

A new horror I've been seeing is bloody parrots without a tail. The fish have a dorsal and anal fin but no tail whatsoever, I would imagine it is a deformity that they are breeding for in Tiawan.

This is as bad as the tatooing but you really can't blame mom and pop shops for selling them, it's the nature of the business. My friends who own pet stores draw the line at painted glass fish and tatooed fish but still have to carry "balloon" (read deformed) mollies, rams, and parrots.

The only way any of this will stop is if people educate themselves and stop buying the stuff. If you stop buying it they'll stop making it but there are really just too many people who want "pretty fish" to look at and don't care where they came from.

[James From Cali]

Originally Posted by nonamesleft47

I don't think the painted shell would bother a hermit as the shell doesn't belong to the crab, it can pull itself out anytime it wants and find a new one. If they painted the crab's back then I could see that.

Years ago they used to paint the shells of baby turtles and sell them at 5 and dime stores. You could buy turtles with your name on it's shell, happy birthday, smiley face, ect. Now this did hurt the turtle as the paint didn't let it shed the old scales from it's shell and it's shell would deform, eventually causing death, not that many of them lived that long.

A new horror I've been seeing is bloody parrots without a tail. The fish have a dorsal and anal fin but no tail whatsoever, I would imagine it is a deformity that they are breeding for in Tiawan.

This is as bad as the tatooing but you really can't blame mom and pop shops for selling them, it's the nature of the business. My friends who own pet stores draw the line at painted glass fish and tatooed fish but still have to carry "balloon" (read deformed) mollies, rams, and parrots.

The only way any of this will stop is if people educate themselves and stop buying the stuff. If you stop buying it they'll stop making it but there are really just too many people who want "pretty fish" to look at and don't care where they came from.

As for the sweetheart parrots(the ones without tails) I believe the cut the tail off then sew it up. At least I think that is how they do it. Im not sure if they could breed them yet with no tails. I agree that people should stop and research the poor fish before going out and buying them.

[aznkonner]

yea the "sweetheart" parrots' tails are cut not a genetic thing. they've tried doing that with other fish as well but it just doesn't look as good. i think it started with silver arowanas in an attempt to make the dorsal and anal fin cover the whole body completely. there was a black arowana in a store near me whose anal and dorsal fin went all the way around and the tail was really small, however, that was a GENETIC disorder. it was really beautiful though. arowanas where the tail was cut in an attempt to elongate the anal and dorsal fin just never looked right.

i think the practice of cutting a fish's tail or tattooing the body is similar to cutting a dog's tail or ears. the only difference i think is that dogs actually survive this process while fish tend to die from it.

this tattooing process has been quite recent, perhaps the last 4 years or so, but they've been using needles to inject tons of fish with extra color for as far back as i can remember. I just can't see how this would lead to making more money....i mean if you DON'T tattoo or ink inject any of the fish and none of them die you could LOWER the price of the fish making it more appealing to the general public. i mean mollies are around a buck. so why not lower the cost even more so stores will start selling them for 50 cents? maybe even a quarter? and blood parrots are not hard to sell but the price is around 5 bucks a head so instead of killing off half the parrots cutting and tattooing them why not just lower the price a bit so the stores can start selling them for 3 bucks?

[waterfaller1]

Originally Posted by nonamesleft47

I don't think the painted shell would bother a hermit as the shell doesn't belong to the crab, it can pull itself out anytime it wants and find a new one. If they painted the crab's back then I could see that.

.

Read these

http://www.crabstreetjournal.com/art...ls_piccalo.htm

http://www.petitiononline.com/pshells/petition.html

[rasetsu]

This practice happens most in Asian community LFS. I'm Asian myself and it disgusts me and it's shameful.