With the recent popularity of the newly released "Finding Dory" movie, children everywhere have been looking in pet stores to bring home their own pet Dory. Little do parents and children know that this saltwater fish, known to them as Dory, is a hard fish to care for.
The blue tang is a highly complicated saltwater fish that requires the care and knowledge of an expert. A blue tang should inhabit an aquarium of about 120 gallons with a quality amount of reef corals resting on the aquarium floor. The tank's temperature must be regulated between 74 and 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Even with an owner's expertise, a blue tang could easily die the same day as it is purchased. Keeping your own saltwater tank, besides looking for your own Dory, could cost close to a thousand dollars. The commitment is a lot more than it seems when you are just looking to spend some money on a fish for your kid that they love from a movie.
Even if your child is convinced that they want their own Dory, you might want to encourage them to pick out their own goldfish, which would be a much better choice for a young child. Make sure your child does indeed understand the circumstances and knows why their Dory, the blue tang, should not be kept simply as a pet. Even though most parents are aware of the challenges of having a saltwater aquarium, sales for the blue tang fish have increased since the movie has gained a lot of popularity within the last couple of weeks. It's hard to stop pet stores from obtaining this fish, especially when the demand for them has increased even more. For a blue tang to even be sold in a pet store, that means that the species had to be caught in their environment and then specifically bred to produce more fish to sell. Unfortunately for the blue tang, this means periods of extreme stress and an unfair, unfit territory for them to live in.
Caring for saltwater fish actually is a hobby -- it's not just a matter of getting an aquarium to hold pet fish. Finding the right water balance for your tank can even take months before fish can safely be placed in your tank.
So to keep things short and simple, let's try and spread awareness of the life of the blue tang. Let's emphasis how having your own Dory is a lot more complicated than it looks on the big screen. Share the wisdom you have about how much care a pet Dory actually needs, and teach young kids and even adults to not remove fish from their natural habitat just for their own pleasure. Tell everyone you know so we can stop the rise of sales of blue tangs. Let's save all the Dorys from being sold and taken from their homes.
