Are We Also Guilty? Response to "The Dark Hobby" documentary film

[00:00:02] Welcome to this episode of The Aquarists Edge, a podcast for home aquarists just like you. Learn more about how to keep a thriving aquarium and discover ideas and tips to give your aquarium the edge. And now, over to our host, Arthur Preston. I came across an online article that spoke about a new documentary being released on streaming platforms on the 25th of April, 2025.

[00:00:30] This documentary is produced by veteran actor and Hollywood legend Martin Sheen and is entitled Aquariums, The Dark Hobby. And of course, with a title like that, it immediately sparked my interest. Upon investigation, I realized that this was not in fact a documentary about freshwater aquariums, but rather about the marine aquarium trade and the impact it has on the reefs of Hawaii and other parts around the world.

[00:00:57] It speaks to sustainability, ethical aquarium keeping and some of the darker sides of the aquarium fish trade. Now, it would be easy for us as freshwater hobbyists to ignore this, to look at it with a bit of an interested eye, but not to really take it too seriously in terms of our hobby because its focus is on marines.

[00:01:21] But are we off the hook? Is the freshwater aquarium hobby that innocent? And the answer is, not entirely. So, in this episode, we're going to leave the marine responsibility, the marine ethical issues that happen to be in that particular part of the hobby, and we're going to spotlight the freshwater aquarium trade and the freshwater aquarium hobby. We're going to look at some of the practices that perhaps we need to consider ditching.

[00:01:51] We're going to look at some of the issues around aquarium keeping and finish off with some easy wins that we can all make to make our hobby a little more ethical, sustainable, and, yeah, just be more responsible. So, even if you have just a little nanotank on the kitchen counter, I believe you can learn something from this episode. So, let's get into it. Let's see what it means to keep our hobby ethical and responsible.

[00:02:21] So, first, let's look at some numbers. About 90% of saltwater ornamental fish are still collected from reefs. But about 95% of freshwater fish in the global trade are captive bred on farms in Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and in the States and Florida. Now, that sounds amazing, you know, in terms of the difference in percentage, but context matters.

[00:02:45] The freshwater aquarium trade boos billions of fish each year, which means that even a 5% wild harvest is measured in millions of individual animals. And the farms themselves use land and water and energy and transport. All those things have a carbon price tag and a carbon footprint.

[00:03:04] Recent research from Valkenlingen University in the Netherlands estimated that shipping a 50 gram tropical fish from Bangkok to London generates about 1.1 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Once you start factoring in the plastic bags, the waterways, and the polystyrene boxes. Which, in practice, means that one neon tetra could hitch a heavier carbon ride than the apple that you ate at lunch.

[00:03:31] So while this recent or brand new aquarium documentary, The Dog Hobby, holds up a mirror to the marine aquarium trade, their marine aquarium hobby, that mirror reflects on us too. And it urges us to take a closer look at our rivers, our fishrooms, and the choices we make as hobbyists. Just a little side note, captive breeding succeeds when there are three pillars that line up. Stable genetics, disease control, and market demand.

[00:04:01] Guppies, angelfish, and bristlenose plecos, they check all those three boxes. But by contrast, as an example, the zebra pleco, which is an Amazon native, it resisted commercial breeding until very recently, because the fry needed strong currents, pristine water conditions, and micro live food around the clock. And it's only recently when breeders cracked that code that demand shifted away from the destructive wild collection in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro River.

[00:04:33] But there are some freshwater victories in this hobby, so let's have a look at those. Let's look at where progress is actually underway. Well, there's something now called mass market captive breeding. And this just simply means that most of the aquarium fish that you'll buy in the freshwater trade today are likely hatched in biosecure ponds, biosecure farms. It's possible that your neon tetra comes from Thailand in a biosecure facility,

[00:05:02] rather than in the Rio Nane River. And that single shift of moving from wild-caught cardinal tetras and neon tetras is estimated to save 150 million wild cardinals and neon a year. That's an astonishing number. In certain parts of the world, there are rice farmers that rotate rice paddies between food crops and labyrinth fish breeding. It's a two-for-one.

[00:05:29] They have food security, and they can export aquarium animals without expanding farmland. There also are improvements, or have been improvements, in transfer protocols. Modern shippers today will use oxygen-permeable thin-wall bags and sedative-free stress coat additives. Survival rates on a 48-hour journey have climbed from 70% in the 1990s to over 95% for many species today.

[00:05:54] There are also organisations in most countries that issue codes of conduct for making sure that fish are bred or traded ethically and legally. Many of them will require clear labelling when stock is wild-caught, or they will prevent certain animals from being sold at fish stores. For example, diet fish. These are standards that are now becoming national standards in many, many countries.

[00:06:22] There are also programmes to engage hobbyists in submitting fin clips to public databases like FishBOL, and that helps scientists spot illegal imports of endangered species that are in the supply chain. There's also the issue of citizen science and DNA barcoding, and that is where hobbyists can submit information to public databases such as FishBOL. You can go look that up. FishBOL. And this helps scientists spot illegal imports of endangered species in the supply chain.

[00:06:51] Now, these advances prove that the hobby can pivot when enough of us care enough. But we're not done yet, because there are places where we're not doing well. And, you know, there's that saying that says, progress never excuses complacency. Let's call out those four areas where the freshwater hobby still falls short. Well, one of the ways in which I believe that this happens is through the dyeing of certain fish, with industrial dyes that are put under the scales of the fish.

[00:07:21] Now, these are the dyed glass fish you might see in some of the stores. There also are sometimes tattooed parod and cichlids. And those particular designs and those colours are created by injecting industrial dye under the scales of the fish. These fish often suffer from very high mortality rates. And the reason that these fish still exist is because novelty sells. When a child walks into a store and sees a beautiful little fish with a bright neon pink stripe alongside,

[00:07:51] it's interesting. It's attractive. And children are drawn to colour. As might I add on many adults. And so because these fish sell, they are sold. Stores stock them. And I really think this is something which is very easy to stop. If we put enough education out there as to why this is cruel, as to why this shouldn't be, if we do enough public education, if stores take a principal stand,

[00:08:19] if sellers, stockers take a principal stand on this matter, the demand would die out. And therefore so would the practice. But it boils down, I guess, to greed. If these fish are selling, people will stock them. And we can stop that from happening. So it's up to us. Just as, again, a little side note, this is not the same as GMO fish. That's a whole different debate. GMO fish and diet fish are two different things altogether.

[00:08:49] Let's quickly talk about energy. A single 340 litre discus tank that's heated to 30 degrees can burn close to 150 kilowatts a year. That's about the annual usage of an A-rated fridge freezer. Now you multiply that by millions of tanks worldwide, and we've got massive consumption on a global scale. What about high carbon? Transcontinental shipping remains fossil fuel-heavy. And even when fish survive, every consignment lands with heaps of single-use plastic

[00:09:18] and expanded polystyrene foam boxes that will linger in landfills for centuries. I'm also guilty of this. I'm about to take delivery of a consignment that I've ordered from Thailand. They're going to arrive in polystyrene boxes. They would have flown from Thailand into Johannesburg, and they're going to fly from Johannesburg to Cape Town. I'm very aware that that has a high carbon footprint. To be honest, I'm not sure how to get past that, because some of the fish that I'm getting in, I can't get nowhere else but in Thailand.

[00:09:47] So, you know, these international imports are wonderful for the hobby, but they do come at a cost. And I'm all ears. If anybody has a different way of bringing these fish in, I would love to hear it. I would love to be able to reduce my carbon footprint in the hobby, but, you know, certainly in terms of importing fish, that becomes a very difficult thing indeed. One of the things that we can all do, though, is not flush our unwanted pets into the sewer system,

[00:10:14] or release unwanted goldfish and other animals into our freshwater ecosystems. You might have seen the social media posts of those massive goldfish that have been found in certain lakes in Canada. You might have seen photographs right here in South Africa of Sylvania choking the Vol River. And the common thread here is that at some point there were hobbyists who thought that getting rid of their fish this way was the kind thing to do.

[00:10:43] Rather than pass them on to a fellow aquarium keeper or put them in an online marketplace or find a way to, if necessary, last resort euthanize the fish humanely, they thought the best thing to do was just dump them in the local pond or go down to the river and dump them there. And, of course, that can have really devastating consequences to the local environment, to the local ecosystem. Now, all of us can stop that. That's an easy thing to do.

[00:11:10] And we can certainly educate others about that as well. Now, those are four things. The dyed glassfish, the injection of industrial dyes, the impact of this hobby on energy usage, the high carbon, and then your unwanted invaders due to people disposing of their animals and plants irresponsibly. And if any of those points strike home and perhaps make you feel a bit uncomfortable, that's good. Discomfort is the first step toward change.

[00:11:38] And so let's look at a couple of things that we can do that are very practical that all of us can implement almost immediately. Well, one of the first things we can do is we can actually find out. We can either ask it at our fish store or we could check when we're buying from a local breeder or from an import list. Are these fish bred in a tank or are they net caught in the wild? Now, I'll be honest with you, I don't put stuff on my list, my artificial lists. I don't put anything there that is wild caught.

[00:12:07] I'll only take in fish that are bred by local breeders or by breeders in a facility. That's not because I want to be self-righteous. It's just because I feel it's more responsible and be if it's wild caught. Yes, they've been quarantined, etc, etc. But I don't know. There's something about that that just doesn't dwell with me. If the fish is living in a river somewhere in the Amazon basin, it should stay there. I know that seems a bit naive perhaps, but it's the stance I've taken. And I do believe it's the right one, to be honest.

[00:12:36] Then what about quarantining? Some people will have to buy another tank. They want to quarantine. You don't need to do all that. You can buy a simple plastic tub, use an old heater, use an old air stone. They'll spill your main tank from disease if you're getting new fish in and they need to quarantine for a while. And it'll use 80% of this medicine than dosing your big display tank. So you don't need to buy a lot of new things or use extra energy on the quarantine tank. Just use a plastic tub.

[00:13:07] Very easy to do. You could also use your aquarium water more effectively. Now, what I mean by that, if you're doing water changes, if you are cleaning aquarium filters and there's a lot of excess water that's dirty, don't toss it away. Use that water into your garden. When you're pot plants, it's free fertilizer. Zero waste. You could also use a timer for your lights. Now, your plants will love this. Your algae will hate it.

[00:13:36] And your power bulb will shrink because you're not going to forget to turn the lights off. You can have them on for a couple of hours a day. Come on, go off and it's easy. No mess, no fuss. And certainly will reduce your energy bulb. And the last thing is that you can simply close a drafty window or reduce drastic temperature changes around your tank, which will help cut down the amount of time your heater is used. Now, I'm currently looking at my fish room and I'm wondering how best I can insulate it and how I can reduce the use of my heaters.

[00:14:04] Because it's costing me money and I'm sure I can find a better way to heat the room. So I would like to cut down on my use of heaters. That's a very practical thing. It's an economic decision. But at the end of the day, it's also something about being a little more sustainable in our approach to the hobby. Another thing you could do in terms of heaters is to just reduce the heat a little bit.

[00:14:25] If your bettors, for example, are healthy at 25 degrees Celsius, take out your heater, drop it down from 27 degrees, 2 degrees less, you will save electricity that way. You will save energy that way. Just twist the dial and change the temperature. You know, most fish are very comfortable within a range. And if you reduce the temperature slowly, they still will thrive. You'll reduce your energy impact as well. You also need to, something you've heard before, feed smarter and waste less.

[00:14:53] You don't want to be feeding fish food they're not going to eat. That's expensive and it's a waste. And it can actually, as we know, create more ammonia in the tank and cause other problems that you don't need. Rather pinch, don't pull. And, you know, it's okay for your fish to go without food for a day. So, don't go give your fish way too much food. That just becomes waste. That's not sustainable. It's not a good use of your resources. So, there are a couple of interesting ideas for you.

[00:15:20] Hopefully those are things that you can put into practice almost immediately. So, here's what I would suggest. Take one thing. Maybe it's turning your heater down. Maybe it's asking around whether your fish are captive bred or wild when you're buying. Whatever it might be, take one thing and make that your goal. Make it a thing that you are going to implement in your aquariums or your aquariums in your fish room with that one tank that sits in your living room.

[00:15:51] Do it. Feel the difference. And feel better about the fact that you are making an impact on the world in a positive way. Not just by educating people about aquarium fish and creating a piece of a living ecosystem in your home. But that you are in fact making a positive impact on the planet. I think the impact of that on a bigger scale, yes, there's the global impact obviously. But it's also about, on a smaller scale, educating people. People are going to ask you about your tank. And how do you do this? What happens here? Why don't you have this on?

[00:16:20] That will help them to also understand that little things that we can do can add up to great impact. So that's really it from this episode of Acura's Edge. And so I just want to close by saying, you know, we've come a long way in freshwater fish keeping. There was a time decades ago when somebody would take a jam jar and stick a goldfish in it and that was the aquarium. Today we know so much more. We have so much information at our fingertips. We have the world's knowledge available at the click of a button.

[00:16:49] And I must be honest, it does feel a little bit irresponsible if people are just buying up a glass box, chucking in some gravel, throwing in some plastic plants, chucking in some fish and hoping for the best. That's not being responsible and it's not ethical. So as people who are ethical and responsible at Chris, I believe we have a responsibility to educate others, to help others. When people come and ask us, we guide them. We talk to them. We educate them.

[00:17:18] And so I'd like to issue each listener of this podcast a challenge to go out there and teach somebody about how to be ethical and responsible as a fish keeper. Maybe it's somebody who's just started out in the hobby or maybe it's somebody who you know has gotten into really bad habits and they just need to be quietly spoken to in a way that obviously doesn't turn a friendship but just guides in the right direction.

[00:17:44] So folks, I'd love to hear some more tips and ideas about how to be more sustainable and ethical and responsible in the hobby. Please go ahead and leave them as comments on your favorite podcast app that you use to listen to this podcast. Or if you happen to be listening to this via YouTube, pop a note in the comments. Tell us some of the things that you are doing to be more ethical and responsible and we can all learn from each other in that regard. So if this episode resonates with you, please share it with a friend.

[00:18:11] It's really the fastest way to grow the community and honestly to multiply the good work that we can all do together. So until we meet again at our next episode, keep learning and keep discovering and keep enjoying this amazing hobby. I will see you at the next episode. Bye for now. That's it for this episode of the Aquarius Sedge. Please consider subscribing to this podcast so that you don't miss further episodes.

[00:18:37] We would love it if you would also rate and review the podcast as this helps make it visible to others. Until next time, keep learning and discovering and keep finding your Aquarius Sedge in this captivating and fascinating hobby.