Fish Tattoos

Sadly, this is not about tattoos on people of fish, which I encourage if you're so inclined (although seriously people, there are other fish to get tattooed on you besides koi). No, this is about injecting fish with dye/paint under their skin to make fake varieties of fish. If you've visited your local Wal-Mart aquarium lately, you've probably noticed some guys that looked like this:

Often marketed as "painted tetras", "painted skirt tetras", or "painted glass tetras" it's a literal name - color has been injected into the fish (which is not a tetra, by the way).

The following sites provide information on this phenomenon better than I can, including details on other ways fishes' colors are altered:

• Painting Live Tropical Fish, at FirstTankGuide.net
• Painted Fish - Animal Cruelty, at Nippyfish
  
• Dyed Fish Campaign at Practical Fish Keeping, a UK tropical fish magazine
• Painted Glass Fish and Other Questionable Practices, at Badman's Tropical Fish
• Death by Dyeing, at About.com
• Painted Fish at Aquatic Community

Even my beloved corydoras are not exempt from this treatment. So yeah, just say no. I'll freely admit that I had a pink painted skirt when I was 11 and didn't know any better; I think its name was Nun. There are plenty of naturally vibrantly colored tropical fish that can grace your aquarium that haven't been subjected to sketchy procedures. Know your fish ethics!