FISH FLUSHING IS A FAUX PAS

FISH FLUSHING IS A FAUX PAS

VANCOUVER, B.C. (Wireless Flash) -- If you've got a sick fish stinking up your aquarium at home, whatever you do, don't flush it down the toilet. That's a fish faux pas, according to Lee Newman, a curator at the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Center. Newman says flushing sick fish down a toilet is a cruel way of euthanizing the critters -- and so is smacking the fish in the puss or shoving it in your freezer. These days, most professional aquariums give dying fish an overdose of a drug called "MS-222," which is an anesthetic used during fish surgery. Newman says home aquarium enthusiasts can use something similar called "Hypno," a tranquilizer used to calm guppies being transported in plastic bags.