Convict population control

"Wendell" wrote in message
om...
My tank (24 gallon) started innocently enough; two electric yellow
juveniles, two blood parrots, two convicts. Flash forward four years,
having bought no fish, I have a blood parrot and about 300 convicts.
(not literally, but... And they _keep breeding_. No fish store
around here wants any more of them; I've pawned off what I could, but
now when they see me coming they flip the sign to say "Closed" and
lock the door. I can't (student $ situation) to expand the tank,
don't have room to set up more tanks, and feel really bad about
flushing them, but it's getting to where it's not fair for the other
fish.

Is there anything I can introduce into the tank that might enable some
population control? A small shark (with or without a frickin' laser
on its head) with an affinity for small convicts? A "Honey, I shrunk
my husband"-sized fish hunter from Arkansas, with a speargun and a
People Eating Tasty Animals t-shirt? (I kid! I kid! I'm from the
Ozarks...)

In years past, the fry population would dwindle more or less
overnight, and coincidentally, the remaining blood parrot would...
grow... (He's about the size of a Mini Cooper S). But lately he/she
seems to be content to just lurk "behind" a rock with a remote
control, a six-pack of fish beer (they drink mostly Kirin), and a bowl
full of blood worms, watching the golf channel on our digital cable.

So, unchecked, there's now... a lot of them. We also have two cats,
who have noted the trend with disgust. "There they go again...
Bloody convicts, filling the tank with bloody children they can't
afford to bloody feed."

Sadly, I can't interest the cats in aquatic feasting, either.
(They're 13, and a lot more concerned with visiting, in a low-key
manner, with the neighborhood cats on sunny days. Sadly, I live in
Souther California, where it last rained about 6 months - and three or
four sets of fry - ago..

I did this a few years back,I was in that same situation,so I
took my jd's when they got big enough and I let them go in
a pond near my house,you know I went fishing a while
after that and caught one of them,I was surprised as hell
by that.

"Charles" wrote in message
...

"Wendell" wrote in message
om...
snip

I did this a few years back,I was in that same situation,so I
took my jd's when they got big enough and I let them go in
a pond near my house,you know I went fishing a while
after that and caught one of them,I was surprised as hell
by that.


Releasing exotic species to the wild can cause all kinds of environmental
damage, and in most civilized countries it's illegal.

A lot of people think things like "just a couple of new fish can't do much
harm in that huge lake."
Around half a century ago some people thought the same thing about releasing
some Nile Perch into Lake Victoria. Within a decade, the Nile Perch caused
the extinction of well over 1,000 species that were endemic to the lake.

Over a thousand species gone forever, because a couple of guys dumped a few
fish.

It may seem like only a small chance of doing harm, but extinction is
FOREVER.

Think about it....
Limnophile