piranhas in singapore

[jachari89]

I'm in sync with the idea of carnivorous fishes for the longest time. I used to have 4 male oscars in my 3ft setup at home. Recently I've heard talk about piranhas being sold (under the radar of course) here in singapore. I was wondering if any of you chaps have any insights on this. Please let me know?

-thenewguy

[icefire]

this is a very good post to get banned from this forum bro..... JUST TO CLARIFY TO EVERYONE AND SAVE THE MODERATORS SOME TIME,
piranhas ARE NOT TO BE SOLD WITHIN OR UNDER RADAR anyone caught for this offence will most likely
1. Have their Premises checked.
2. Illegal fishes confiscated and destroyed.
3. Summoned to court for a hearing.
4. Fined or Jailed for having banned species.
(heard fine is in thousands per illegal fish you have not per species...)

The reasons that such fishes are banned is simple.
1. They are an invasive species.
2. They can cause much harm to humans and our ecosystem.
3. They are endangered.

Lets say... Some uneducated person throw 100 pieces of real live red belly piranha into our ecosystem which is mainly our central catchment reserve as he was bored with keeping such fishes. The piranha will start breeding like mad in the reservoir as we have no winters to kill off piranhas. Our local fishes stock will start to dwindle while piranhas start to increase. Then imagine when we have a few months of hot season and basically the water levels go down in our reservoir and our friendly PUB officers whom did not know there is a piranha invasion decides to take the boat our to patrol our local waters and just nice have an accident which causes boat to capsize. ~leaves out gory details of being attacked~ After which the PUB decides to catch all piranhas but found out that its not possible as they have bred into tens or maybe hundreds of thousands.. So now it leaves 2 methods to get rid of piranhas which are introduce more fierce fishes into the reservoir or poison the reservoir but both methods do not work as we are using the water for drinking and more fiercer fishes meant more dangerous waters for PUB and us..

One can argue that if they get small amounts they wont be a problem but note that it only takes a pair or a trio to make a gang within a short time...

Hope this clears up any questions regarding keeping piranhas in Singapore.

[vinz]

To have piranhas escape or released into our waterways and flourish would be catastrophic. For such fishes, AQ strongly urges any members who know of any persons or shops selling piranhas to report it.