When Laurie was a kid, she had recurrent nightmares that featured her getting eaten by a shark. Decades later, Laurie goes to sleep next to them (or at least in the same house). She’s the proud owner of two epaulette sharks (Hemiscyllium ocellatum) in her 1,135-liter (300-gallon) tank: bottom-dwelling spotted sharks up to 0.6 meters (2 feet) long that are known as “walking sharks” because they use their fins to crawl on the bottom of the ocean. Laurie acquired them from an owner who no longer wanted them. “I can’t release them because our waters are different than their habitat, but I can give them a good home and appreciate them while respecting Mother Nature,” says Laurie, a U.S. resident who asked to be identified by her first name. She adds that the sharks give her a feeling of Zen.

Home shark tanks are no longer just the province of tech bros or celebrities who spend millions on 38,000-l (10,000-gal) aquariums full of apex predators. Now middle-class aquarium owners are adding smaller, bottom-dwelling sharks to their home aquariums. These sharks are benthic, meaning they hang out on the ocean floor. Many can breathe while lying down by pumping water through their gills in contrast to pelagic sharks like whitetips (Carcharhinus longimanus) and tigers (Galeocerdo cuvier), which swim the open ocean and must keep moving to breathe.

A growing aquarium industry is serving home shark tank owners’ needs by providing bamboo (Hemiscylliidae spp.), epaulette, zebra (Stegostoma tigrinum) and catsharks (Scyliorhinidae spp.). Bamboo sharks can be bought online for as little as $90, while epaulettes are $900. (Zebra sharks are the most expensive, around $6,000.) Shark ownership has become democratized. And thanks to TikToks showing off pet shark feedings and YouTube accounts boasting about home shark aquariums, small home shark ownership has become cool. Should it be? And, is it ethical to own a pet shark?

Inadequate aquariums

Lise Watson, the assistant director of animal operations and habitats at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, doesn’t think so. “Generally speaking, most home aquariums are inadequate for even the smallest shark species. … Sharks kept in undersized aquariums often suffer from long-term health issues, including stunted growth and deformities as they mature,” she wrote in an email. “Even smaller species require specialized diets, life support systems, and veterinary oversight. Resources typically only available in professional aquarium settings.”

Jay Hemdal, a retired aquarist and curator who worked with sharks in a Midwest public aquarium for decades, pretty much agrees. The only shark he ever gives the OK for in an off-the-shelf home aquarium is the coral catshark (Atelomycterus marmoratus). And he says those should only be owned by someone with a lot of expertise.

Hemdal knows from personal experience that shark ownership can be dangerous — for the sharks. In the 1960s, when he was 13, he saved up money from his paper route to purchase a nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) he’d seen at a pet store. He placed the shark, which grows to 2.7 m (9 ft) long, in a 109-l (29-gal) tank. The shark died. Now Hemdal spends a chunk of time on Reef2Reef, a discussion board for saltwater aquarium owners, advising people not to buy sharks.

Data on sharks in the aquarium trade are nearly impossible to come by, as “the global trade of marine ornamental fish, which has been ongoing for nearly a century, has never been effectively monitored,” wrote Monica Virginia Biondo et al. in a 2024 study in the journal Animals. But, using data on fish imported to the European Union from 2014-21 (data on U.S. imports are less recent), they found that shark imports for home and commercial aquariums were on the rise. “This increase in live-shark trade is concerning, as nearly two-thirds of shark and ray species associated with coral reefs are at risk of extinction,” they wrote.

Laurie accessed her sharks ethically, but not all epaulette shark owners do. Epaulette sharks made Biondo’s list of one of the most concerning highly traded Chondrichthyes (sharks and rays) and Osteichthyes (bony fish) that are endangered or vulnerable. In 2020, Conservation International wrote that “Walking sharks [epaulette sharks] have now become major targets for capture and display by both large public aquariums and private collectors, and we are concerned that this unregulated trade may be unsustainable.”

Sharks have different personalities

Like Laurie, Tyler McCleave, a sales executive at a freight brokerage who used to work at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, tries to source his sharks ethically. McCleave keeps four sharks in his 1.8-m-by-1-m (6-ft-by-3-ft) tank at his Ohio townhome: two epaulettes, a grey bamboo (Chiloscyllium griseum) and a wobbegong (Orectolobidae spp.). Most were captive-bred or sourced from other hobbyists who weren’t taking good care of them. “The grey bamboo was in a 50-gallon [189-liter tank] when we got him and lived most of his life there, and I am just such a sucker for any animal with [an] abysmal backstory,” McCleave says. (Grey bamboo sharks are classified as vulnerable on the IUCN’s Red List). The wobbegong, which is not a threatened species, came from a Tennessee shark breeder.

McCleave hand- or tong-feeds his shark fresh clams, crabs and shrimp from the supermarket three days a week. The sharks know which days they’re fed and they come out of hiding from the PVC pipes and wait their turn. (The sharks have a pecking order: The male epaulette goes first).

His sharks have different personalities, he says. The female epaulette likes being pet. The male epaulette likes to flip over starfish and steal their food. But he cautions that sharks aren’t like domesticated animals that bond with their owners. “I spend almost every day working on my tank, and it’s for an animal that wouldn’t even acknowledge me if I passed away,” McCleave says.

Though McCleave loves his sharks, he doesn’t think most people should own them. In fact, he says sharks are too easy to obtain. “Anybody can buy a shark online,” McCleave says. Customers aren’t vetted to ensure they have a large enough tank or proper knowledge on feeding and water care, he says. It’s not just the ease of access that worries him; it’s also the damage to the sharks when they’re shipped. Two of the captive-bred sharks he ordered online were dead when they arrived. “It is a horrible, horrible aspect of this hobby,” he says.

While bamboo and epaulette sharks “are particularly well suited to human care due to their manageable size and bottom-dwelling nature,” Watson, of Shedd Aquarium, says, “their care requires expertise and resources found in professional aquariums.”

Aquarium influencers

Scroll through aquarium influencers on YouTube and you’d never know shark ownership could be harmful. Case in point: YouTuber Paul Cuffaro, whose dimpled smile and shirtless jaunts through his “shark pond” have garnered him 3.2 million followers. His 21,000-l (5,500-gal) saltwater pond in Jupiter, Florida, is filled with two juvenile blacktip (C. limbatus) and zebra sharks, as well as a horn shark (Heterodontus francisci).

Cuffaro’s two juvenile sharks will outgrow the pond, says Hemdal, the retired aquarium curator. The blacktip will eventually become 1.5 m (5 ft) long and require a 45,400-l (12,000-gal) aquarium. The zebra shark, which is now a beautiful black-and-white banded baby, will become a 2.4-m (8-ft) spotted shark (which is why it’s called a leopard shark in Indonesia).

“People buy these little baby sharks, and for some reason, they think they’re not going to grow,” Hemdal says. Or they think they’ll buy a bigger tank and they never do, he says. He used to field weekly calls from people asking if the aquarium can take their shark, and he almost always says no. “To be honest, I don’t know what happens to these sharks,” Hemdal says.

Shedd Aquarium, too, receives calls from people looking to rehome their sharks. “[It’s] often because the animal has grown too large or the care requirements have become overwhelming. Unfortunately, like most AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums, Shedd Aquarium is unable to accept these animals,” Watson says, referring to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. “AZA standards for ethical animal acquisition require intentional planning, including appropriate quarantine space and biosecurity protocols to protect the health of the entire animal population. In many cases, sharks from private homes have significant health concerns due to improper care, inadequate environments and unknown medical histories.”

Sharks aren’t for everyone to own

Owning a zebra shark is particularly egregious because the sharks are endangered. Baby zebra sharks and their eggs sometimes find their way to the home aquarium market after being collected from the wild. Eggs can net around $300 and live sharks sell for $6,000-$10,000. It’s legal to own these sharks in the U.S., but the zebra sharks that Cuffaro and others own are not helping the species survive — they’re doing the opposite. “There is no outcome for that fish other than it’s going to die an early death,” Hemdal says.

Even if an owner of a zebra shark wants to rehome it after it grows too big, it can’t become part of StAR, a shark rewilding initiative in Indonesia. The StAR project works with public aquariums worldwide to breed zebra sharks and then ship the eggs to Indonesia. Shedd Aquarium participates in StAR. “These groundbreaking efforts are made possible through the careful breeding of genetically appropriate animals in public aquariums, ensuring healthy populations that can help restore wild ecosystems,” Watson says. But zebra sharks and eggs from home breeders cannot be part of StAR, Hemdal says, “because collection data is needed to understand what subpopulation the eggs came from and commercially sourced eggs don’t have that.”

Christine Dudgeon, who has studied zebra sharks for a decade since leading the IUCN’s Red List assessment of the health of the shark’s population, says even in the unlikely case that a person had an enormous, public aquarium-sized tank big enough to house a zebra, they would need to recognize that the shark was a “long-term commitment.” The oldest zebra shark recorded in captivity was around 40 years old, she says. “A lot of people that have [zebra sharks] are probably really quite passionate and interested in those animals, but it’s helpful … for them to understand a bit more of the ecology,” Dudgeon wrote in an email. She hopes that anyone thinking of buying one recognize that the sharks aren’t just bottom feeders: They regularly swim 620 miles (1,000 kilometers).

“Social media has portrayed [sharks] as fun, and that you have to have [them] to have a have a full aquarium,” McCleave says. “Not everybody should own a shark.”

This article originally appeared in Mongabay.