The RFI is very simple -- red tail cats, pacu piranhas and iridescent sharks (the "Big Three") all get much too large for any ordinary hobbyist to take care of, and they make up 90% of the fish that stores and public aquariums have offered to them as "donations". When the hobbyist with the 2' long red tail cat finds that the local fish store and nearest public aquarium don't want the fish, they often just release the fish into local waters. Not only is this illegal -- and stupid -- but it is only a matter of time before some politican's mother goes to wade in her favorite local lake, and she finds a huge alien-looking fish, dead, washed up on the shore. She calls her son, and her son initiates a bill to make it illegal to keep any fish that is not native to that state. HR6311 is in the Federal legislative process, and if passed this bill would essentially put the aquarium hobby and industry out of business. California already has a law that bans a fair number of aquarium fish. And I bet you didn't know that it is illegal to sell neon tetras in Massaschusetts? Yep. The law says that it is illegal to keep, buy or sell "piranhas and their relatives", and both piranhas and neon tetras are in the same family, Characidae, which makes neons, technically, illegal.

Stores can join the RFI by taking "the pledge" that they will 1) not sell those three fish, and 2) that if a hobbyist has a fish that they can no longer keep, they can bring it into the store, and that the store will try to rehome the fish, and if that is not possible, they will humanely euthanize the fish and dispose of it.

Those of you who are successfully keeping any of the "Big Three" fishes, or any other huge fish in a sufficiently large volume of water -- my hat is off to you. I hope that everyone will support the RFI -- to learn more about it, and to sign up all you have to do is to go to:
www.fishchannel.com/rfi
We have RFI posters for local fish stores, and bumper stickers for hobbyists.
Thanks.
David Lass


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Be warned -- everyone at college has a weird roommate. If you don't have a weird roomate -- then you're the weird roommate.
                                                                                                  Conan O'Brien, Stuyvesant High School.