Posted on 09/28/2017 7:01:51 AM PDT by Red Badger
Leah Kongsrude, St. Albert's environment director, says she's seen captured goldfish up to 30 centimetres in length, compared to ones sold by pet stores that measure only about two centimetres
ST. ALBERT, Alta. — Workers have dipped nets and a naturally occurring chemical into a storm water retention pond near Edmonton in a bid to kill thousands of unwanted goldfish that have made the water body home.
Officials say the aquatic invaders are the result of goldfish reproducing after people released their unwanted pets into the wild or flushed them down the toilet.
Leah Kongsrude, St. Albert’s environment director, says she’s seen captured goldfish up to 30 centimetres in length, compared to ones sold by pet stores that measure only about two centimetres.
Kongsrude says goldfish are hardy and can out-compete naturally occurring species for food.
Crews used nets on Tuesday to remove the reddish-gold swimmers and also applied the chemical, Rotenone, which is used to remove unwanted fish species from fresh water.
The pond will be checked later on to determine whether the cull was successful, and workers will also watch another nearby body of water to determine whether goldfish have taken up residence there.
Kongsrude said the city is lucky the fish are just in the pond and not in the Sturgeon River, which flows through St. Albert.
“We pumped this pond down and froze it right to the bottom in the winter and they were back in the spring. So they can live with very limited oxygen and low water temperatures.”
Officials are also reminding residents to not release any fish into any pond or body of water in Alberta — including flushing Goldie down the sewer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
Maybe there are subspecies in different regions of the country with different feeding behaviors, but here nobody would touch catfish other than poor people and most often black poor people. Trash fish just like carp, that’s what I always heard, until farm-raised catfish started entering the market.
They grow to their environment. Keep 'em in a small tank (where water gets dirty quicker), they won't get that big. Put 'em in a lake where water is plentiful so that the gunk won't stunt the goldfish's growth, then they keep on growing.
Why do people do this? Releasing pets into the wild is never a good idea. For another example, look at the python issue in Florida.
Great story.
That's mostly due to water quality. Low quality stunts the growth. Fish never stop growing until they die. Kept in good water, a fish will continue to grow.
Goldfish (and all carp) release a hormone (I think it’s a progesterone) that in high concentrations acts as a growth inhibitor & birth control.
This is why goldfish in a 10 gallon tank will stay small, but if you take them and put them in a 100 gallon tank they will all of a sudden get huge and the best way to get goldfish to breed is to do lots of water changes.
Personally I wouldn’t give a plug nickle for any farm raised catfish. Knowing how to clean a catfish, what to keep and what to throw away makes all the difference in the taste. never keep any of the belly flap beneath the rib cage and it is a must to fillet out the blood line down the middle of the fillet. When I do a fish fry using catfish, everyone is amazed at how good it is.
I think Ted Kennedy already tested the other part of that theory...
:)
Sounds like the title of a Roger Corman movie.
Because toilets flow straight to the ocean. Wait! What? They don't?!? My toilet is about 50 feet from the rive but with regulations, it has to be pumped up hill, across the street, down the block, around the corner, across that street and into a tank on several lots I had to buy to be in compliance with the laws governing waste. No fish could survive that. I'm sure city sewer systems are even more hazardous to flushed pets.
"When you feed a fish, never feed him a lot. So much and no more! Never more than a spot."
Depending on their environment, probably like carp. IIRC, they are a variety of carp.
This is from all of that nuclear testing they did in Edmonton.
None of these have three eyes...................
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