Faced with dozens of smelly, swamp-like swimming pools on foreclosed properties, Florida officials are getting extremely desperate. With nearly 9 percent of upscale Wellington’s homes in foreclosure, they needed to find a fast and cheap way to deal with the problem. Their solution? Amazonian catfish, the very same fish used to keep aquariums naturally free of algae.
From the Sun-Sentinel:
Most bottom-feeders don’t make it past the guard gate. But Amazonian catfish, fashionably leopard-spotted and wearing fins as flamboyant as pool party caftans, are living the good life in several upscale Wellington neighborhoods hard-hit by foreclosures, including Olympia and Versailles.
“The water looks lighter around the edges,” said Debra Mitchell, the village’s lead code compliance officer, peering into a pool in Versailles, whose water is a putrid olive green.
The village has started a pilot program using the algae-eating fish, called pterygoplichthys and commonly known as “plecos” or “sailfin catfish,” in slime-choked swimming pools. Mitchell said she hopes the slime-eaters will be an inexpensive and eco-friendly way to clean up abandoned pools, an all-you-can-eat banquet of scum.
Unlike mosquito fish, which were dumped into swimming pools on foreclosed properties by California officials last summer, Amazonian catfish are already a part of the local ecosystem. They’re not native, of course – like many other species in Florida, they were dumped by irresponsible pet owners and subsequently flourished. They’re present in canals and lakes all over the state.
Using these fish – which were provided by a local fish farm that caught them in a nearby lake – will cost Wellington officials $700 for a year, versus the $7,000 that it would have taken to maintain the pools using chemicals and other traditional methods.
While it’s nice that officials consulted (and received encouragement from) the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Science before they did this, it’s hard not to be concerned about using live animals in such a way – particularly when, as the Sun Sentinel article states, the fish will be ‘destroyed’ when the houses are sold.
Link [Sun-Sentinel]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
