they said goldfish Grow to the size of their bowl-when the bowl is a lake, things can get out of control.
After several football-sized goldfish were recently spotted in a lake south of Minneapolis, Minnesota officials issued a warning about dumping pet fish in local waterways.
A photo released by Burnsville last week showed that some really huge goldfish were pulled from Lake Keller in the city, where the former pets have become a major issue in the ecosystem.
“Please don’t release your pet goldfish into ponds and lakes!” The city tweeted on Friday. “They grow bigger than you think, and cause water quality to deteriorate by destroying bottom sediments and uprooting plants.”
The news echoes several other warnings issued by communities in the United States and Canada, where the wonders of the former fish tank have become an environmental scourge.
Goldfish are relatives of carp, and they are also hardy. They reproduce easily, survive in low-oxygen water, and do not die in the cold winters of Minnesota, which makes them difficult to eradicate once established.
Burnsville specimens look like ridiculously enlarged versions of typical fish tank foods, with their huge eyes and pumpkin orange scales making them invulnerable to most potential predators.
In essence, goldfish are the ultimate machine that kills the ecosystem because they only eat and reproduce in their own way to gain dominance.
Goldfish are now considered an invasive species in parts of Minnesota, including Carver County, where some 50,000 Some of them were removed from an entrance last fall.
They are also regarded as a major threat to the Port of Hamilton, Ontario, and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans is concerned that they will spread to other parts of the Great Lakes.
As part of a three-year plan to manage and study the species, wildlife experts in Carver County have been trying to culminate as many fish as possible, but they admitted last year that their struggle is difficult to attract public attention, especially when goldfish are not like invasive When the Asian carp is as obvious, they will collectively jump out of the water when disturbed.
“It just hasn’t reached a high level of awareness,” University of Minnesota biologist Peter Sorenson told the Associated Press last year. “They won’t jump up and throw people off the boat, and they won’t break bones. But this is a global problem.”
Officials on both sides of the border have not yet come up with a comprehensive anti-goldfish strategy, but they are paying close attention to this issue. They have been preaching the same message to pet owners throughout North America.
Their message is simple: don’t wash your live fish, because they are likely to survive the journey.
— File from the Associated Press
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