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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think a man who feeds LIVE goldfish to his Piranhas is a bad bet?

66 replies

MilkandWine · 20/04/2011 17:03

This honestly isin't a wind up.
A good friend of mine has been going out with her new bloke for a few months now and seems fairly smitten. He is away working for the week and she is looking after his cat whilst he is away. Today I went round the flat with her and saw that he has a huge tank with 6 Piranhas in his living room!

Now each to their own but then on closer inspection I saw 2 terrified goldfish with all their fins bitten off cowering behind the filter! This guy feeds LIVE goldfish to his Piranhas!!!!!!!! Now I used to go to college with a lad years ago who kept piranhas and I know there is no need whatsoever to feed them live food. They are just as happy eating dead stuff.

So basically this guys idea of evening entertainment would seem to be watching live goldfish get ripped apart.

I am sorry but I honestly think this is a huge red warning flag and my friend needs to bloody well heed it. What sort of man is he????????? Wierdest thing of all is my friend is a huge animal lover and the last person I would have imagined stomaching such awful behaviour.

Oh and the fish are now in my parents pond. I fished them out and took them over there. No bloody way I was letting the poor little buggers get eaten alive! I think I'm still a bit traumatised.

OP posts:
CharlieCoCo · 20/04/2011 23:40

sorry im not stranded bear but in case she doesnt reply tonight il tell u my assumption. there was one frog, he killed the shrimp but it didnt agree with him so the frog died from eating it.

CurrySpice · 20/04/2011 23:47

Oh I see, the shrimp continued its killing spree from within the frog!! Shock

CurrySpice · 20/04/2011 23:49

When you said his system, I thought you meant the frog didn't agree with the shrimp's system of doing things. Which seemed a bit Orwellian!!

beanlet · 20/04/2011 23:56

The point us NOT thay some fish eat other fish in the wild. The point is that boyfriend chooses to feed live prey to his pirhanas when he doesnt have to, and presumably gets a kick out of watching it.

Very, very nasty IMO with big red flashing warning signs. Tell your friend to get rid.

ZillahWhoDrankTooMuchGin · 21/04/2011 00:00

stranded - your story reminds me of this

i would dump any bloke who did this and not stop running until i hit the coast - it does not bode well and many child abusers have a history with animal cruelty (i'm not making that up - i just don't wish to put details here). Well done for saving fishies - i hope they survive the ordeal....

cory · 21/04/2011 07:40

Strandedbear, as we keep trying to explain, the reason everyone assumes this man enjoys it is that unlike the case of the python there is no need to feed goldfish to piranhas, in fact it is an inappropriate diet for them, and any pet shop will have told him so.

If you deliberately go out of your way to give your pet an inappropriate food that is more expensive and more trouble and that most people do not use, then your motives probably are questionable. I believe there are YouTube videos of piranhas eating goldfish, clearly not intended as a lesson in responsible pet keeping- that is the kind of context we are looking at. I would assume that a man who did this was, to say the least, extremely immature- which would ring alarm bells with me.

onagar · 21/04/2011 08:08

I have zero interest in fishing, but don't they use live bait?

I seriously doubt that there's a law against giving an animal live food. If there was it would be a very strange law that said it was 'illegal unless your hobby is very popular'.

Also I'd love to see the wording to see how it avoided making fly spray a weapon of mass destruction.

Still, I sort of agree. Anyone who keeps an animal away from it's natural environment and makes it do things purely for their own entertainment is pretty sick and you don't want to be around them.

cory · 21/04/2011 08:29

Vertebrates, but no invertebrates (e.g. live bait), are covered by the 2006 Animal Welfare Act which makes it an offence "to cause unnecessary suffering to animals under the control of man". As far as I can see, feeding an animal to a pet that a) does not need this food b) does not actually benefit from it (goldfish being too fatty and not very nutritious) is well within the description of "causing unnecessary suffering".

In the same way as arranging to have a lamb slaughtered in the usual way in order to feed it to your dogs is not covered by the Act, but encouraging your dogs to chase a lamb and tear it apart would be covered.

It would have to be said, though, that there has never been a test case involving the feeding of live fish.

Bombus · 21/04/2011 09:43

As cory says, it's the difference between vertebrates (fish, amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles) and invertebrates (insects, crustaceans etc). It's illegal to feed live vertebrate prey to animals in captivity.

ccpccp · 21/04/2011 12:41

Live feeding to predators in captivity is fine. They do it in Zoos all the time and often it is the only way to get an animal to eat.

Its not fine to feed oversize fish to piranas though, to get nibbled away rather than snapped up in one mouthful. Its very cruel.

cory · 21/04/2011 12:55

well, I suppose live feeding in zoos to animals that will not otherwise eat does not come under the heading "unnecessary suffering"

they don't feed live food to animals that don't need it

Melly19MummyToBe · 21/04/2011 12:56

I'm assuming he buys the goldfish from his local petshop? So wouldn't the petshop think there was something strange about why he keeps going in and buying more goldfish? Wouldn't they suspect something? Apart from thinking that he's not a very good fish owner if he has to keep buying more.

Goblinchild · 21/04/2011 13:48

ccpccp, could you name any zoo in the UK that live feeds vertebrates to other animals? Or in Europe?
I know that they do in China, and that various animal rights organisations are campaigning to stop it.

cory · 21/04/2011 13:54

Come to think of it, of course you are absolutely right, Goblinchild, they don't that in zoos, do they?

And tbh I'd struggle to think of any animal commonly kept in zoos that would need live food: virtually all predators are also scavengers, so will take dead food.

cory · 21/04/2011 13:57

Some fish are extremely difficult to get to take other than live food, but they will usually take invertebrates

SueSylvesterforPM · 21/04/2011 20:39

I saw 2 terrified goldfish with all their fins bitten off cowering behind the filter! This guy feeds LIVE goldfish to his Piranhas!!!!!!!! Now I

the mental image I just got how horrible, yeah thats pretty sick

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