pedicure fish

F

Flower1982

AC Members
Sep 29, 2005
769
0
0
Pennsylvania
Real Name
Jess
Has anyone heard of this? Putting your feet in a tub of fish that will eat off the dead skin? Here is an article if you haven't heard about it.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hzJgRAaYCJMvjh98hAk45as3DPgwD9226PM80

I was watching tv before I have to go into to work and this talk show on. They were talking about this as well. Their one segment was about how you can do this at home too. An asian algae eater will do the same thing and you can buy them at your local petstore. They said that you can use the chinese algae eater as pedicure fish. What is wrong with people? They didn't mention anything about the care that the fish need. I'm thinking great....now i'm going to have people coming into the petstore where i work wanting these fish so they can do a fish pedicure. I e-mailed them but I highly doubt i'll get a response. this just really annoys me.
 
This has been done in other countries for some time now, with Garra rufa. It is interesting though that the Chinese Algae Eater was being used instead.
 
Yeah, someone had linked that article before.

Its a sick fact of the world that people - the majority of people even - see animals as objects that can be used at their discretion without any type of consideration for the suffering of the animal. They simply don't care.

These pedicure foot baths - its interesting from the fish point of view. I guess to original idea was a koi pond type pool where up to 8 customers stick their feet in and get nibbled but because of obvious concerns the health dept made them change it to individual tanks that they show at the base of the chair and the water has to get changed between customers.

So here we're talking how many water changes are these fish going through a day with no acclimation?? Every time they turn around they're getting moved from one tank to another... and if this is the first in the pedicure process - what the hell are those feet bringing into the water?? Plus, the other obvious concern of chemicals and soaps from the salon contaminating their waters.

But these people don't care - if 10 fish die, they're little fish, they just replace them. The 'who cares' mentality and lack of empathy with our environment and the critters in it is the death of many many many. It makes me sick. The people on your talk show could care less about fish - they just want to ride this latest trend. Nevermind the fact that the fish chosen in this one salon were fish able to withstand very warm water and the algae eaters they are suggesting wouldn't be able to. Its massive fishy death waiting to happen. You'd think more people would be outraged. But then again, I thought that about the ipod betta fish speaker of death.
 
pedicurezm0.jpg
 
vampie said:
This has been done in other countries for some time now, with Garra rufa. It is interesting though that the Chinese Algae Eater was being used instead.
Click to expand...

12 Volt Man said:
in the Yahoo version of the article, they show a picture of the fish, but the fish pictured is not Garra Ruffa even though it says it is..

the pics looks like cichlids of some kind.

Gara are elongated, like the CAE.
Click to expand...

12 Volt Man said:
thats the pic. those are not garra rufa.

they look like a tilapia species..
Click to expand...
I was going to say they do not look like Garra rufa. Good deal though, Volt. They look like tilapia to me more than garras.

Garra rufa
garra.jpg


psoriasis1.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom