What do you guys/girls know about the ugly thing they call fish painting?? More and more pet shops around here sell "Chinese painted fish" or plain "painted fish". Especially the Parrots are sold in pink, blue, green, purple, etc... Now I'm wondering, the 2 small baby blue oscars I had (which died) - were they painted??? It surely cannot be good for any fish to be painted?? Or am I just very far behind?

You don't know the half of it. They have to actually removed the protective slime from the fish before either injecting, or adding the dye. I don't know every single way they do it, but some ways they actually dip the fish in some kind of acid. The silly thing is, the dye wears off after a while so you will actually end up with a drab looking fish. We try and advise people not to buy these type of fish. It is totally inhumane to do this to any creature. If I know of anyone who does this to fish, they will certainly get a mention on this website, and so will their business.

I'm not aware that it's been banned, it certainly should be

It is absolutely disgusting!! Shocking to say the least - well, I'm definitely going out to make a list of pet shop that do sell fish like that and I will supply you with a list. I like that ad of yours and I am going to make copies for the petshop where I took that sick oscar the other day - the poor guy really wants to learn everything he can (and said I may keep the blind oscar). It might take a while to get names of those people, but its a mission - I will definitely "march" to get that stopped...

I've written an article about which can be found wherever the members articles on this site is...

I think painted or dyed fish is just plain wrong. I dont know how it isnt banned to import them. It is cruelty plain and simple. If one of my local fish shops sold them I would tell them in no uncertain terms that they need to stop selling them or they will lose my business

The best way to stop them being sold is economics. They sell them cause they make money on them. However if they think they will lose business by selling them then hopefully they will stop selling them

There are no cruelty to animal laws in Australia that relate to fish - but I discovered that if the same practice was used on an amphibian like an axolotl then the perpetrated could be prosecuted...