What to do with fish you can’t keep

As an aquarium society, we are often contacted, sometimes with urgency, by people who are hoping that someone will take fish that are no longer wanted.  Often, the fish in question have grown too large for a typical hobbyist’s aquarium.

The purpose of the Long Island Aquarium Society is to promote the breeding and showing of aquatic life, not the rescue and/or re-homing of unwanted fish. We encourage you to follow the suggestions/ guidelines we have offered for your unwanted fish. Most of our members already have more aquariums full of fish than any reasonable person should keep.  And large fish that require 100 gallon aquariums and will eat anything smaller than them are not easy for anyone to keep.

Here are a few tips that might help:

• Take a photo of your fish to your local pet store and ask if they would take it. Occasionally, they will.  Be prepared to give it away, however, as few pet stores will pay for a large fish that they may never be able to sell.
• You can post a description of your fish on our Facebook page. You might get lucky and someone there might be interested.  As always, be cautious with anonymous internet transactions.
• There are some species of fish that might be of interest to the two Long Island public aquariums, the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead, or the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn. It’s a long shot, but worth a try.

Please don’t release fish into local waterways.  It’s illegal and can sometimes lead to serious problems.  If you’ve run out of other options, it’s better to euthanize your fish than to release it.  This site has some ideas on how to humanely euthanize fish:  http://kb.rspca.org.au/what-is-the-most-humane-way-to-euthanase-aquarium-fish_403.html