Big Fish Campaign - General Press Release

The ‘Big Fish’ campaign is the focus of 2006 promotional activity for NAW (National Aquarium Workshop) and aims to raise public awareness across the UK about the making sensible, informed choices when choosing pet fish.

Choosing unsuitable fish as pets has been a more frequently occurring problem over recent years. Fish of all shapes and sizes are being imported into the UK aquatics trade and a large % of these fish are appearing in general pet stores and being sold to unwary customers.

Unwary customers, who do not expect their pet fish to grow to such enormous sizes and who do not have the adequate space or equipment are being left with a ‘BIG’ problem.

This problem has lead to a number of aquariums such as the Blue Planet Aquarium being inundated with public donations of all sorts of fish species. Although members of the pubic may see this as the perfect solution for their problem it creates problems for the aquaria themselves. It is often very difficult for aquaria to mix donated stock with their own stock and they often lack the space to provide a purpose built home for the donated fish.

Research has highlighted this problem as over a period of just 4 months 11 UK aquaria were asked to house 144 fish that had outgrown their owner’s tank.

With this in mind, the Big Fish campaign aims to :

• Encourage the public to research properly the fish species that they wish to own as pets.
• Overturn the notion that fish will never outgrow the size of their tanks.
• Prevent the sale of these species in pet stores to protect the welfare of these fish.
• Alleviate the problem of public aquaria being pressurised into accepting these big fish

The Big Fish Campaign has come up with some handy hints for would be fish keepers:

• Think about what kind of things will the fish need – food, tank size and system
• Think about how much time you will have to look after the fish.
• Think about your budget as buying a fish is a long term commitment
• Think about quarantine facilities for sick fish
• Remember that your tank system will need to mature before you add the fish
• Try to buy fish that have been bred in captivity
• Always quarantine your fish before adding them to the tank

For more details on BIG Fish advice and activities please contact the Blue Planet Aquarium Ranger office on 0151 357 8804