# Is keeping fish in bare tanks an act of cruelty?



## KipperSarnie (13 Oct 2016)

I can't help feeling keeping fish in bare tanks is the same cruelty practised by zoo's back in the 50's & 60's where animals were kept in small cages without stimulation "For their own good"!
"It's easier to maintain & keep them free from disease"  I'm told but did not the same argument apply to Lions, Tigers, Elephants & the such back in the day?

I'm keeping Discus but refuse to keep them in bare tanks, even my breeding pairs have wood, plants & a base layer. 
OK I have to work a bit harder on maintenance but isn't this what it's all about?
I enjoy my fish as well as the tank "Aquascaping" .... Perhaps not to your high standards.


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## MrHidley (13 Oct 2016)

The reason I don't use bare tanks, is because I find them boring. I don't however feel there's a whole lot of evidence to suggest it's a cruel practice. Most fish we keep have been bred in captivity in bare tanks and know no better, and i don't believe they have the cognitive ability to want for more. Providing the tank is large enough and the fish kept in large enough numbers I'm OK with it.


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## roadmaster (13 Oct 2016)

I wonder if bare bottom is any more cruel than say 30ppm CO2 (gassing them) ,Uber lighting being blasted at them for ten hour's or more, (no cover /floating plant's to provide some relief), or if some species appreciate the sharp increase in total dissolved solid's from the addition of near daily mineral salt's we use for fertilizer's.
Have seen many fishes raised in bare bottom tank's sans the afore mentioned gas/light's/fertz and made a purely unscientific observation that the fishes seemed less skittish/spooky when the bottom glass was painted on outside, or white/blue foam was placed down before placing the tank down.
Some fishes did not seem to like the reflective  properties of the glass while other's were unfazed.


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## Aqua360 (13 Oct 2016)

I wouldn't do it, I don't have any evidence for it; it just doesn't feel right


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## KipperSarnie (13 Oct 2016)

MrHidley said:


> The reason I don't use bare tanks, is because I find them boring. I don't however feel there's a whole lot of evidence to suggest it's a cruel practice. Most fish we keep have been bred in captivity in bare tanks and know no better, and i don't believe they have the cognitive ability to want for more. Providing the tank is large enough and the fish kept in large enough numbers I'm OK with it.



An elephant or Lion bred in a cage knows no better but in my opinion that doesn't make it right!


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## sciencefiction (13 Oct 2016)

MrHidley said:


> Most fish we keep have been bred in captivity in bare tanks and know no better, and i don't believe they have the cognitive ability to want for more.



They do. Just move those same fish to a suitable tank, plants, suitable cover and tank mates, etc... and you'll see them behave like they've just seen heaven.

I wouldn't be worried about bare bottom tank much if it has cover such as driftwood and plants in pots if needs be. It's the lack of any cover whatsoever that stresses fish out. Plus its a known issue with bottom dwellers losing their barbels in bare bottom tanks. The bare glass promotes the growth of harmful bacteria and needs to be wiped regularly. A thin layer of substrate prevents that.


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## roadmaster (13 Oct 2016)

KipperSarnie said:


> An elephant or Lion bred in a cage knows no better but in my opinion that doesn't make it right!



 Poor Ivan the gorilla. (can google Ivan the gorilla)


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## MrHidley (13 Oct 2016)

KipperSarnie said:


> An elephant or Lion bred in a cage knows no better but in my opinion that doesn't make it right!



That's not a great argument though, because Elephants and Lions have large brains. Fish are largely instinct based animals, at least on the small scale.


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## zozo (14 Oct 2016)

This is a very sensitive subject of discussion, probably one that will never come to a consensual conclussion. This just because of the personal interest someone has in keeping animals for entertaining purpose.. As so often said in this hobby is that no matter how you scape it or don't scape it in this case in the end it is you who has to like it.

Tho if you break it down to it's actual meaning what Vivaristic stands for, i think there can be put a lot of questionmarks to it in many cases...

It's vivaristic we all try to practise here, which means recreating an as natural as possible biological/ecological invironment to keep animals in a confined living space (Vivarium = livingspace). In our case it's Aquarium = Aquatic living space or Riparium, paludarium etc. all under the same umbrella where a waterbody is involved.

If you break down the actual meaning of biologic and ecologic then it is meant from the logic part as "Knowing". That there should be a certain degree of knowledge involved.

Since we are in majority all just hobbyists and far from specialists we can put a very big questionmark to the knowing part..

The only thing i know, if i break it down like that, it is nothing more than logic that keeping fish in a bare tank is far from practising vivaristic.. Ok literaly it's a living space, they have a space and they live.. But from a biological and ecological standpoint of view and if fish are just stupid animals living instinctively, we should at least take there instictive needs into consideration when trying to recreate a livingspace for them. And this is something one should know, since it is observed and documented enough by now.

But then again, field researchers reported finding adult kilifish living in a flooded footprint of an elephant.. Now it gets complicated, doesn't it? Nature does that. If it's a justification for us to do that too? I don't know..

I thought about it a lot since i'm for the biggest part of my life involved in this hobby.. Also questioned myself a lot and never realy found a truly honnest answer..

Once a very well known Austrian zooligist said
"Every single captive stickleback cared to death, contributed more to wildlife conservation than any sign at the park entrance ever did"...


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## MrHidley (14 Oct 2016)

I think this is an excellent summary, Marcel. I don't like to judge people in our hobby unless they're causing clear harm to their animals (Oscars in 100 litre tanks, inadequate filtration etc.). Equally, I know we've all made mistakes, killed fish, kept a goldfish in a bowl as a child.


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## sciencefiction (14 Oct 2016)

The point is, one would know if fish are happy in their environment by their general health and life span. That's the only way to know for sure you're doing the right thing...If you're changing fish often, change your habits..

The problem is, when you browse the discus forums, knowing that majority of so called experienced discus keepers use bare bottom tanks, it does raise your eyebrows why the forums are saturated with topics on sick discus....Don't get me wrong, I love reading the topics because the knowledge on diseases is great in there.

But there's a big connection between stress and disease...Fish diseases and regular deaths are a sign of severe or/and consistent stress...I don't know if its more difficult or easier for the fish care taker to keep fish in bare bottom tanks in that case. But hey, they say it works better for discus.....I think the problem with keeping discus in decorated/planted tanks is the amount of food one needs to feed them if you want to grow them big... Such food and amounts will wreak havoc in any tank early or later....So for growing up fish I understand why its done that way...But adult fish should be in planted or biotope tanks with all the cover necessary...

Plus it won't hurt a thing to put a few potted plants and a driftwood for some cover in any bare tank...I think its laziness and stubbornness...Fine layer of sand to prevent bacterial growth won't hurt either. No one can convince me you can't siphon it well....Majority of their home tanks by my observation are majorly under-filtered.... Add to that the high temperatures and slow moving waters lacking oxygen....Everything in those types of set ups would shorten the lives of majority of fish...

In discus nurseries, there's a subtle difference in how fish are kept.  The filtration is massive. I can't remember which one I watched lately, but they had massive trickle filters under the tanks that they Didn't clean at all often because the enormous sponges were on top and the debris settled on the bottom where it gets flushed...The water changes are automatic, no wiping and messing with the tank with the fish inside. Its drain and fill...

In a home aquaria it becomes different with the amount of food those fish are being fed, wiping everything like a lunatic, washing the clogged media daily, they are disturbing the bacs non-stop...leading to immature filtration consistently..
And they often deal with lingering ammonia and nitrite as a result....Then dump meds to remedy the problem....led by the panic and fear of losing their expensive fish...

Some don't even bother with filtration because of the large daily water changes...I couldn't even keep 3 shrimp in an immature fish tank. even with water changes...The test was barely reading 0.25 ammo and the shrimp had frozen on their chosen spots and not moving...

Rant over....


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## Manisha (14 Oct 2016)

I think Roadmaster hits the nail on the head with the examples he gives in that there are no black & white answers - just varying degrees of grey...

For breeders perhaps conditions are designed to produce highest yield & not considered optimum longterm? But who am I  to judge when I benefit from the choice of livestock available to me as a hobbyist?

I would like to run an iwagumi in the future (out of curiosity) which would be plants & soil substrate, however would like to keep either Norman's lampeye or clown killifish. Both together would be stressful for the fish so will run an iwagumi for some months and then disassemble & run a more appropriate layout with cover for the livestock later.

I think we have to do our best with our own level of knowledge & personal responsibility over our tanks & lucky to have access to more resources than ever to aid us!


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## dan4x4 (14 Oct 2016)

I feel keeping fish in a bare tank is awful. Whats the point? 

To answer this question you have to observe the animals in the wild. Understand their instinct. Even if they're bred in a tank they still have instinct, it would take thousands of years to breed out instinct and even then it may not work. The best example to back this up would be a dog. They all have the instinct to..
-find food
-shelter
-breed

It has been proven that animals have emotions. I don't know if fish do. But instinct tells them where is safe in the water.. this is their shelter. Instinct might not tell a fish to find under a certain species of plant but it'll tell it to go under something, close to something etc etc..

The whole reason i got into growing plants was to keep my fish happy even though I enjoy the plants as much as the fish.

We can read things as humans and a fish is definitely happier in an aquarium with plants.

I have no phd people. I don't need one, go get a rescue dog from a shelter and let it loose in a forrest and you see instinct. You will also see how happy it is.. you will pick up on its emotions as a human we have this ability.


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## sciencefiction (15 Oct 2016)

dan4x4 said:


> It has been proven that animals have emotions. I don't know if fish do.



There are more and more studies done proving animals have emotions.  Majority are very recent and I read many on dogs. And I am certain fish have emotions too on some level, or at least the vast majority of the few underwater species discovered and studied.. It needs people that are capable of empathy to feel emotions in non-human beings creatures....Its us that are ignorant and need centuries to admit or discover the obvious.  I am not a vegetarian by the way...And I love fish food... a bit of a hypocrite.


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## zozo (15 Oct 2016)

sciencefiction said:


> a bit of a hypocrite



That's why i never found a realy honnest answer.. We all contribute and have our fair (analogic) share and live in our own little soap bubble. Looking beyond my bubble i absolutely agree, i reject the idea of keeping fish in a bare tank or a bird in a cage.. But in the reflection of my bubble, i still i keep fish captive in a tank.. I also had chickens running through the garden and at one time i had so much i made my own chickensoup.. So i had to chop off chicken heads to manage that.. The first one felt realy odd, killing something you love and eat it.. Some people asked me and other even found me cruel without asking. And these last ones are the real ignorant. They do not find it cruel to go to the supermarket and buy a already dead chicken for dinner.. They ignore the fact that this animal actualy realy had a rather cruel live in a to small cage bred in 8 weeks to get ready for beeing slaughtered by a machine.. That's very easy after all it's a chicken you do not love. But yes deep down i am cruel even if it is with respect and love, maybe that's what makes me a human spoiled with luxery, but at least i do not ignore that.


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## sciencefiction (15 Oct 2016)

zozo said:


> I also had chickens running through the garden and at one time i had so much i made my own chickensoup.. So i had to chop off chicken heads to manage that..



Yep, nothing wrong with that. Sure your "soup" chickens had a lot better life than 99% of chickens sold in the supermarket. Its disgusting how they raise them on a large scale. Its barely bearable watching those documentaries....

Though, Marcel, I doubt it you'd ever eat your aquarium fish   unless we're talking World War 3 scenario and starvation, which isn't far off either...We may want to stock on yummy, meaty fish that breed easily


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## KipperSarnie (15 Oct 2016)

I doubt it you'd ever eat your aquarium fish  :) unless we're talking World War 3 scenario and starvation said:


> Are there many bones in Convict Cichlids?


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## MrHidley (15 Oct 2016)

zozo said:


> Some people asked me and other even found me cruel without asking. And these last ones are the real ignorant. They do not find it cruel to go to the supermarket and buy a already dead chicken for dinner.. They ignore the fact that this animal actualy realy had a rather cruel live in a to small cage bred in 8 weeks to get ready for beeing slaughtered by a machine.



Yes, i've always been puzzled by peoples reaction to hunting. If I go out, shoot a deer, use it's skin, prepare the meat and eat it for 4 months, i'm somehow cruel? That deer had a far more dignified death and happy life than the one in the farm killed in an abattoir. To make it clear, I haven't personally done this, but I have friends that have and I do aspire to source all my own meat one day.


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## Million (16 Apr 2017)

For me it's about seeing the fauna behave in a natural way, so I want to create an environment in which they are able to do this, and which I enjoy aesthetically. Not too hard to achieve in my experience


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## Tim Harrison (16 Apr 2017)

This discussion reminds me of another one we had here a while ago...https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/whats-your-reactions-when.42741/


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## zozo (16 Apr 2017)

Tim Harrison said:


> This discussion reminds me of another one we had here a while ago...https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/whats-your-reactions-when.42741/



Remarkable isn't it!?.. The meaning behind this reoccuring subject is that people do think about it, but the practice stays well alive at the same time.
Mean while, the answer should be obvious and it shouldn't even be questioned.. Since locking a human for long periods of time up in a bare room is without question nor doubt rather considered a somewhat cruel punishment. What does make us so unsure and the topic questionable when it conserns animals? After all they live with the same basic senses as we do.


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## sciencefiction (16 Apr 2017)

When one of my tanks broke down and my corys ended up from a tank with fine gravel to a plastic container with sand, first thing they did was bury themselves halfway down in the sand. They were like kids. I can argue they were happy in the gravel tank as they were very healthy either way.....but its the joy they seem to experience, or whatever the right word is for fish seemingly being happy, that makes you think twice next time you try keeping them in the same unsuitable conditions...We determine the entire lives of these little creatures and the least we can do is make them happy and keep them healthy.

For the last few months I incidentally I ended up keeping fish in a black above ground indoor pond, and the activity level, colours of the fish, and interaction with me has never been better. The more cover you give them, the more privacy they have, the more they anticipate seeing you and feel comfortable with you around. I have 10 clown loaches now. Anyone that knows clown loaches may know they could be shy fish and run away from you.  The other day I put all my hand down to the bottom to pick up a melon I had fed the fish. My baby clown loaches  shot straight at me and started nibbling my hands up and down which is very unusual for these fish. They normally now get excited and gather at the surface when they see my head staring down, so do the other fish. I've kept clown loaches for years and have a bunch of 5 year old loaches as well that lived in glass tanks the majority of their lives.  They were never as friendly in a glass tank and are now extremely friendly and relaxed with me.  Despite the ugliness of the pond in comparison to a glass tank, there's no way I can put these fish back, not the same fish, in a see through box...as they've already seen better.

There's many things we can improve the environment of fish and a bare bottom tank is not one of them. I'd rather stick to a very thin layer of sand which I think is ideal.  Whether its act of cruelty or not, I don't know but it is actually counteractive health wise to have a bare bottom because bare glass is known to develop nasty biofilm which is otherwise controlled by the bio-diversity of established substrate. Bacteria and parasites eat each other. There's a food chain for them too, and keeping a bare bottom means creating a super environment for a selected few that become pathogenic. Similar to us humans on Earth....We're the nastiest parasite ever, feed on anything and of everything, of each other too metaphorically speaking 

There, fish living in plastic  The amount of substrate I have can't even cover my smallest nail but there's enough for them to browse through. There's a bristlenose in there that's 4-5 years old now. As a matter of fact I barely saw him before he got moved to this tank last year.  He's out all the time now.


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## Smells Fishy (16 Apr 2017)

zozo said:


> But then again, field researchers reported finding adult kilifish living in a flooded footprint of an elephant.. Now it gets complicated, doesn't it? Nature does that. If it's a justification for us to do that too? I don't know..



WOW. Just goes to show that fish really aren't fussy by nature, they just take what's delt to them and live with it. As long as the fish has its basic needs met its not going to care that there's a plastic clam that opens and closes with air bubbles coming out of it or even if the tank is devoid of anything.


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## zozo (17 Apr 2017)

Smells Fishy said:


> OW. Just goes to show that fish really aren't fussy by nature, they just take what's delt to them and live with it. As long as the fish has its basic needs met its not going to care that there's a plastic clam that opens and closes with air bubbles coming out of it or even if the tank is devoid of anything.



Well it's hasn't much of a choise sometimes, it's just a freak of nature an egg or fry ended up in there with a bird bading in it or something like that.. It beeing in there doesn't nessecary say it feels comfortable. In most cases when a fish shows it, its about to late to do something about it. I would be the same as if you couldn't speak and no hand to write, then try to tell someone your not feeling well. Nobody probably will notice till you fall over.
But some are indeed very well addapted to surviving very harsh conditions. Take for example the Carp, this fish still lives in rather poluted, parasite invested muddy pudlles where everything else is long dead.

In our neighbourhood we had such a pool, the socker club next to it used it to water the fields. It took more water from the pool than the spring could provide and was slowly draining it and killing all the fish. The last fish in there was the carp. Nobody did anything about it, I caught carps there with a rod and a piece of floating bread one after the other sometimes 8 in a few our session from 15 to 20 lbs. They were allmost all infested with some worm all over there body, mainly on their head and in their mouth. Don't know what it was it looked like a small red leach. Anyway took 'm all in a sack to another nearby very large lake 10 minutes away.  It was realy horrible to see and remarkable how resiliant these animals are. But i think i resqued about 35 carps in all from that stincky pool.


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## Delapool (17 Apr 2017)

I use a bare tank for the betta (5gal) and find that much easier to keep clean. I have either plastic or live plants in there for quiet spots, etc. For cleaning the tank I just take out and put back in. 


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## sciencefiction (17 Apr 2017)

Delapool said:


> I use a bare tank for the betta (5gal) and find that much easier to keep clean


 Keep clean from what exactly? The only way one can "clean" a tank properly is if they change the water daily. Water is the stuff these fish "breathe" and the majority of pollution comes from fish's gills..i.e. it gets dissolved into the water. What affects fish is what's dissolved into that water. They care nothing for detritus and dirt, and in fact some fish love stuffing their noses in such stuff. This same stuff does not pollute the water as much. It's just unsightly.  We clean tanks for aesthetics. Being human beings, we have a need for aesthetics but what fish care about is their water being changed...drained and filled with the minimum of fuss and stress for the fish, meaning removing of decor is actually stressful to fish. How long have you had the betta for? Sorry for being blunt..


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## Delapool (17 Apr 2017)

sciencefiction said:


> Keep clean from what exactly? The only way one can "clean" a tank properly is if they change the water daily. Water is the stuff these fish "breathe" and the majority of pollution comes from fish's gills..i.e. it gets dissolved into the water. What affects fish is what's dissolved into that water. They care nothing for detritus and dirt, and in fact some fish love stuffing their noses in such stuff. This same stuff does not pollute the water as much. It's just unsightly.  We clean tanks for aesthetics. Being human beings, we have a need for aesthetics but what fish care about is their water being changed...drained and filled with the minimum of fuss and stress for the fish, meaning removing of decor is actually stressful to fish. How long have you had the betta for? Sorry for being blunt..



Clean from the buildup of fish waste eg poo. Think of it as cutting out the gravel part of the gravel vac. So no, not related to aesthetics at all. 

This betta, I would say several years now. 




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