[happykitsune]

This brings up a good point. Thank you for the insight. I know now I will only give these fish to my friends and family as pets. Thanx once again.

Originally Posted by emc7

Even if you catch fish in your back yard and keep them in your house for a week, don't release them back in wild. You can introduce exotic diseases, parasites, snails, plants, etc. that have the potential to harm the ecosystem. The practice of dumping unwanted exotics give fishkeepers a bad name and encourage additional regulation. If you want to be able to import fish from all over the world without excessive taxes or quarantines, discourage anyone you know from dumping anything from an aquarium into the wild. A closed pond on your own property that, if necessary, could be sterilized may be ok, a stream is never ok.

Mosquito fish have been introduced all over, and while they do help reduce mosquito larva populations in stagnant, otherwise sterile bodies of water, such as retention ponds, they have caused harm when they have escaped into the larger watershed. See wikipedia: gambusia Affinis. Most any fish will eat mosquito larva and native fish would have been a better choice for mosquito control. Hybrids are especially bad if they can interbreed with local fish and destroy species.