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New Article: The GloFish Chronicles!

Today's article examines GloFish, the hot new pet fad that lets people buy "glowing" fish for just five bucks a piece. You've probably seen 'em mentioned in the news over the past few months, and the story was just too offbeat to pass up on. Do GloFish match the hype? Not really. I'm sure others will say differently, but my batch wasn't anywhere near as "otherworldly" as all of the reports and debates suggested. They're just fish that are kinda sorta shiny. Article provides close-up photos of the three I bought, plus an extra close-up photo of their disgusting fish food. Unless you've got a blacklight, they're nothing to go nuts over.

Posted by Matt on 01/12/2004. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 112 comments

I have seen som green ones at the pet store where i live, the look pretty cool under the fluorescent.

Chestnuts roasted by OtherMatt @ 01/12/2004 1:40 PM

I’m a freaking danio fan. Never heard of glowing ones, but the regular ones are neat to watch.

We did used to keep a type of fish called a neon tetra (I think), which was definitely way neater than these GloFish. They didn’t actually glow, but in the right light, you’d almost think they did. They were blue and red. Real pretty sons-of-guns. Sad thing is, it’s almost impossible to find those buggers anymore.

Chestnuts roasted by Jessie @ 01/12/2004 1:57 PM

I purchased penetentary 2.. got it in the mail over the weekend. Hilarious. We turned it into a drinking game with the number of "suckas" used. Whole lot of fun. something not mentioned in Matts review, which was the funniest part of the movie… half dead gets out of prison, and is in the backseat with his friends… he see’s a hot chick and says "check out the turd cutter on that sista"

he called her ass a turd cutter. I laughed for like…. 25 minutes.

Chestnuts roasted by chad @ 01/12/2004 1:59 PM

I will wait for the accompanying animated series and merchandise before I get involved with Glofish.

Although I have blocked it from my memory, I believe "The Sixth Day" with Arnold has something to do with pet genetics.

Chestnuts roasted by Tobias @ 01/12/2004 2:07 PM

Dude, your fish look pissed!

Chestnuts roasted by j..k.kh @ 01/12/2004 2:22 PM

GloFish Chronicles, a Quinn Martin production.

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 01/12/2004 2:23 PM

I’m not sure if all these fad pets are good for our soul. Not saying I believe in a soul or vice/versa
but buying living things then letting em’ die because the fad is over seems wrong. I’m not saying ANY of you are letting your pets die once your bored with ‘em it’s just the feel I get from this blog…
Please tell me I’m wrong.

Chestnuts roasted by turkeys can't fly? @ 01/12/2004 3:38 PM

I’ve never had fish so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Chestnuts roasted by turkeys can't fly? @ 01/12/2004 3:39 PM

Yeah, genetically-modified pets are cool, precautionary principle be damned! Seriously, if scientists adhered strictly to the precautionary principle for such things, there would never be any innovations in anything because you can never prove that nothing unexpected will ever go wrong. In any event, I think, if those fish were released into most environments in North America, they wouldn’t survive for long, having been bred to be completely dependent on man, and, if one guy accidentally released two or three into the environment and it was a compatible environment, I don’t know if there would be enough of a breeding pool for it to be a real concern… wait, where are the non-glow zebra fish native to, exactly?

Anyhow… on a somewhat related matter, you all know nature’s glow-in-the-dark fishes, the lantern fish, right? I know, it’s really just that one little dangly tendril that glows. They only live in the deepest, darkest waters of the ocean, far off the continental shelf, and especially in the trenches, correct? So, one thing I’ve always wondered… if you brought a lantern fish up to near the surface somehow, would it just explode like humans on Mars in Total Recall because the body of the lantern fish is designed only for intensely high water pressure? And, if that’s the case, would a fish from near the surface be crushed by the pressure at lantern fish depths? So why didn’t the water pressure seem to affect Marlin and Dory when they met the lantern fish in that one scene in Finding Nemo? That one scientific inaccuracy bothered me a lot more than Dory being able to read English, actually…

Chestnuts roasted by Steve Brandon @ 01/12/2004 3:40 PM

Oh, sorry, I meant "Angler Fish", not "Lantern Fish".

Chestnuts roasted by Steve Brandon @ 01/12/2004 3:50 PM

my roommates fed my peacock mantis a mouse once. it was rough. he also maimed a crayfish his own size while we video taped it. i miss apocolypse. here’s a pic of her:

http://predatoryfish.net/pics/narc/slimp.jpg

Chestnuts roasted by nick @ 01/12/2004 4:40 PM

Thoughts on the subject of fish:

1. I always have these stressful dreams where I have to keep fish from dying because something happened to their water…

2. My betta died recently, his corpse was completely devoured by the tons of snails in the little tank in under a day…

3. My cousin had the most evil bastard betta EVER. He’d snap his head right at you (wherever you were) and flare his gills, then he’d look away… AND DO IT AGAIN (over and over…)! The fish belonged to my younger cousin, but she was so afraid of it, she kept it in my older cousin’s room.

Chestnuts roasted by Rewolf J @ 01/12/2004 4:43 PM

p.s., glofish are sterile to my knowledge. the green ones came out first but for some reason they’re only selling red ones? odd.

Chestnuts roasted by nick @ 01/12/2004 4:44 PM

Snails will eat a fish’s carcass? Cool! We haven’t abandoned the damn beta yet. If anything, he gets royal treatment. And dehydrated worm things. Though what Matt got for those glo fish looks absolutely nasty and I think I’d puke if that’s what Fred ate, glass jar or not.

Chestnuts roasted by Killer Duck @ 01/12/2004 5:01 PM

Name your fish ChocoDile! Or King Don.

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 01/12/2004 5:33 PM

Matt,you feed your fish plankton,the coolest character on Spongebob Squarepants? For shame!

Chestnuts roasted by Overlord @ 01/12/2004 6:42 PM

The only pet I ever owned that actually belonged to me (as opposed to technically belonging to another member of my family) was my angel fish, Angelina (named for the heroine of the books Katharine Turner’s character wrote in "Romancing the Stone"). I know fish aren’t supposed to have great memories, but I swear she knew me, and not just because I fed her. She was a great pet, but she outlived all of the other fish in the tank and was the last one before she finally died of assumeably old age.

Dad had a Japanese fighting fish he named Kong (don’t ask). Kong is about the only fighting fish I know of who wouldn’t fight. In fact, he had a chunk of upper fin missing because the other fish literally picked on him, and he wouldn’t defend himself. All things considered, I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did.

Matt, I think your fish are handsome, whether they glow or not. They’re a really nice shade of red-gold, anyway, more gold than real goldfish. I can’t afford even the smallest pet at the moment – I can barely afford to feed myself. After all the pets my family had that died, ran away, or had to be gotten rid of due to lack of funds and/or because we just didn’t know how to care for the darn things, I’ve promised myself that I’ll never have a living creature until I know how to take care of it and I have the money to properly take care of it.

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 01/12/2004 9:40 PM

I want a sugar glider!!
I’m smuggling one back when i go to Australia..hehe

Chestnuts roasted by Allie @ 01/12/2004 10:03 PM

Steve Brandon: Actually, the deeps sea fish do explode. Not in a huge bang, but more slowly, with gases expanding and causing small bursts in the body. The trawlers end up with squishy dead things (which is why they don’t show up much in aquariums).

And yes Matt, I’ve seen your article on mantis shrimp. And I also think they are probably the coolest invertebrate alive today. The pistol shrimp was a suggestion for a cool shrimp that could be kept with other animals.

And it amazes me about those mantis shrimp–some people go crazy trying to kill them (usually in heavily stocked fish tanks) while other people will spend $60 on them. If you see the fish I keep at my site, you can probably tell that I owuld be a person who would definitely keep them. If I ever kept saltwater (I haven’t. But I’ve had brackish moray eels).

Chestnuts roasted by Sean @ 01/12/2004 10:15 PM

We have a fish that screams.

Well, it certainly yells pretty loudly. It’s some sort of spotted catfish/tank cleaner guy. He’s from Wal*mart, home of the bright blue tanks full of dead, white-eyed guppies. I swear, this fish has PTSD. We were moving, so Mr. Trajeal scooped the fish out of the tank to deposit him into a temporary holding tank, but the fish jumped out of the net and landed on the floor. His mouth opened and he immediately started screaming. I’ve never heard a fish scream before, and this was surreal. Mr. Trajeal dumped him into the smaller tank, but the fish has never been the same. He literally spends all day zooming around the bottom of the tank w/ this crazed look in his eye. I think he’s waiting for the day when he can grow lungs, crawl out of the tank and strangle us in our sleep.

Chestnuts roasted by trajeal @ 01/12/2004 11:17 PM

Screaming fish? Creeptacular.

Chestnuts roasted by Allie @ 01/13/2004 12:23 PM

I just rememberd.
I used to have a bunch of zebra tetras…They ate eachother. Seriously. they also ate my Pleco…poor poor Jim Morrison…
Didnt matter how much i fed the little dipwads they still ate each other, i went from 22 (here in Can they’re only like 50 cents a piece) to 4 in less then a month…

Chestnuts roasted by Allie @ 01/13/2004 12:31 PM

actally, its been proven that fish do have more than a three second memory. they also have the ability to associate someting with something else, ie a buzzer= food.

Chestnuts roasted by Rachel Cakes @ 01/13/2004 1:42 AM

GOD! No wonder I have nightmares about fish!

Starwenn: How about a grasshopper? They cost NOTHING to feed (just give it a pile of moist grass every few days) and it’s just a dumb bug so you don’t feel too bad if it dies.

Chestnuts roasted by Rewolf J @ 01/13/2004 1:43 AM

I want a fish tank but my mom says it’s too hard to take care of it. Bleh. I can do it. -_-

Chestnuts roasted by Adrastia @ 01/13/2004 1:53 AM

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2004 at 12:40 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.