Culling is the polite name for killing a fish, usually because it is better then letting it live. I personally do not like people who kill because of messy fins, bad scales, or what ever because YOU brought life into the world, and YOU have the responsibility to care for it.
To many breeders, the most responsible thing is to cull/kill those fish that don't come up to scratch. Sometimes it can be difficult enough to find homes for all the nice fish out of a spawn, let alone those fish that are duds.
A single spawn can give you a couple of hundred fry. That is a lot of money, space and time that has to be dedicated to each of those fish. Why waste resources on a fish that is just going to have to be given away?
I know that most breeders outside of the big farms in Asia aren't making a living off their fish, but it is nice to actually break even every now and then.
Say 50/100 bettas from one spawn have terrible fins, bad scaling and no ventrals. There is not a market for those sort of fish, so why invest all that time into raising 50 fish that are going to struggle to find a good home.
I would rather cull down to the best of the best and know that those fish are going to find good homes, rather than have to dump 50 culls on my local fish store and pray that they don't end up in a dirty bowl on someone's kitchen counter.
There's nothing wrong with a quick, humane death. Culling has happened ever since man first decided to domesticate and purpose breed animals.
"I would rather cull down to the best of the best and know that those fish are going to find good homes, rather than have to dump 50 culls on my local fish store and pray that they don't end up in a dirty bowl on someone's kitchen counter."
These are my exact thoughts too. Plus once a sub par fish is out of your hands then you have no contol whether they breed it or not and risk further spreading those bad genes around the gene pool
To cull a fish is quite easy
Feed them to a big fish, poison them with clove oil, squish them. As long as its quick and effective its fine.
"I would rather cull down to the best of the best and know that those fish are going to find good homes, rather than have to dump 50 culls on my local fish store and pray that they don't end up in a dirty bowl on someone's kitchen counter."
These are my exact thoughts too. Plus once a sub par fish is out of your hands then you have no contol whether they breed it or not and risk further spreading those bad genes around the gene pool
To cull a fish is quite easy
Feed them to a big fish, poison them with clove oil, squish them. As long as its quick and effective its fine.
I agree with this 100%
Giving the fish to a petshop...you might as well just cull them because you are dooming the vast majority of them to a horrid life. Now if I knew people who wanted to take in some culls and promised not to breed them, people from say this site yes i would certainly give them up to those people but doesn't mean all what...500 culls or so a year will find such a home. Most of those fish would have to go to petshops and honestly that's WORSE than culling, sit in tiny dirty cups until someone puts you in a tiny cold and dirty bowl and leaves you to die? It's RARE the fish from petshops get good homes with good people who research them, at this point the fish IS suffering MY fish who I put hard work into. Might as well have had a bent spine because either way life if hell and the fish would have been happier dead than living like that. It's the same with show mouse breeders. Unwanted babies are better off dead than homeless and living in dirty abusive situations.
I don't really believe in killing a fish just because a few scales don't look right or has a wonky fin.I have 3 from breeders that were culls but the breeders wanted them to have a good home so they gave them to me. When I get settled in Texas I wantto take in culls that would otherwise be. euthanized . If a fish has a deformity that would cause it to have no quality of life then it should be humanely euthanized.
edit : the boy in my avatar is a cull.
If you live in a place where Fighters are very, very common, then you wouldn't have to worry about the wrong genes getting into the population, because you have plenty that aren't.
But in little countries like New Zealand, where there is only a limited ammount of fighter fish (Thanks to tough imports and lack of owners), you really do not want those genes getting into the population. If they got into the wrong hands, or an inexperienced breeder, they would breed them, then sell them, and the cycle would carry on. Then it would be even more difficult to stop the gene than it is just culling them to prevent it.
Check out the eBook Betta Fish Care Made Easy
Similar Threads
