What I do know is that these fish - once too big and/or too greedy - will make their way into our natural waters, causing disaster among our endemic fauna.....
actually. no.
what they DO is restore the natural food chain...
this particular species IS an endemic!
the sole reason they are so rare in the Netherlands is because 4 million idiots armed with fishing rods have driven it to a near extinction here.
and the engineering and depleting and polluting of our inland waters; all the toxins and pesticides and digging and rerouting and poldering and agriculture has done the rest
today our freshwaters are too crowded because every single year the fishermen lobby releases 400.000.000 (yes, these zero's are true!) Cyprnids in our waters to add "prey" for the fishing horde.
the main reason behind this is that fishing damages fish and hence a lot of those cyprinid die. the other reason is that inedible fish like carp and minnow and all are released after catch and the edible pisacivores like large bass, pike and catfish are not
as a result we have a really sad situation:
-ther waters are overcrowded by digging cyprinids and hence turbid.
-the plancton is depleted, animals like daphnia etc are in too small numbers because of the mud; their natural food (unicellular algae) cannot thrive because of the lack of light. also; too many plancton feeders are dumped in the waters every year
-the top of the foodchain is largely absent and diseases like mould, bacterial infections, botulism and so on go rampant
-the absence of unicellular algae on 1 end and top predators on the other end causes too much nutrition and once summer hits, outbreak of botulism and blue green cyanobacteria are all that common.
the BEST thing we can do in fact is release loads of Silurus, pikes and other endemics, stop the dumping of 400 million muddiggers every year and shoot the rodcarring idiots.....
y will be ok. At the moment I will keep them in an aquarium, but when they be adult they will live in my outdoor pond.
