GOT A WILD FISH TALE?--Tell me yours...

[SGypsyMermaid]

and i'll tell you mine. there's the one about the asian upside down catfish, the one about the red claw crabs, the one about the missing ropefish, the one about the ropefish and the jewelfish, the one about the buttikofferi and the electric cat...

[Beaker]

Let's see:

I fell for the dead clown loach routine. For those that don't know, clown loaches sleep on their sides, against or under things and look almost dead. I didn't know this until when I went to scoop out the poor little dead guy and he swam away.

I was also the one that posted a story about finding a live red claw crab in my bedroom one morning in the last forum. I thought it was part of a chewed dog toy until it moved. I was shocked because of how far and out of the way it was from the tank.

Even after tightening up the cover after that incident, I can still find dried up ghost shrimp stuck to the carpet behind the tank. I guess they rather committ shrimp-a-cide than be cichlid snacks. That also reminds me off when I saw something in my dogs mouth. I opened her jaws to find a dried out feeder fish lodged between her lips and gums, eww.

One day my wife and I couldn't find our Gold Nugget Pleco. We looked everywhere in and around the tank with no success. I opened the lid to start taking stuff out and there he was. He had swam upstream and stuck himself to the lip of the whisper filer to eat the algae I suppose.

I had a Bicher jump out of the tank while I was doing a water change and he landed in bucket of water I had on the floor. I think he had been watching too much high diving events during the Olympics. I thougt it would be cool to enter him on stupid pet tricks, but he hasn't ever tried it again.

That's about it, but I'm sure there will be more things that happen in the future. These guys keep me on my toes all the time.

[harmonic]

i had a 6" red empress jump 8 feet across the room during a water change- i mean it landed 8 feet away, clear across the couch where my wife was sitting. we just looked at it dumbfounded for a second before we both dived for it. i aint exagerating here...8 feet before it hit the ground.

what a shame, it was killed a few weeks later by a male astatalopia callipetra. (ps?) i dont think they go by that name anynore do they?

thus we learned about keeping different genus together...

[SGypsyMermaid]

ok--here's the asian upside-down catfish story:

one friday at lunchtime, i was cruising the tanks at the petland near work, when i spotted a fish in a tank labeled 'upside-down catfish'. the fish caught my eye because it was jet-black with just a few silver/gray speckles--cool! wonder if it's a syno? looks a little different--gotta have it. the fish gets bagged and i take it back to work with me and place it on a shelf in the judge's robing room(i work in bronx supreme court).

later that evening, at home, i've changed into an old denim jumper, shoes off, hands on the phone to call for pizza delivery when i freeze...i don't i have my fish! aaarrgghhh...i left it at work! maybe it's not so bad--a couple of the court officers at work have tanks in their locker rooms. i can just call and get somebody to put the fish into one of the tanks until monday...ohhhh noooo...the bag is in the judge's robing room--the LOCKED robing room, and none of those guys has the key.

it's a shame. i really liked that fish...never saw one like it, but i'm not going back to the bronx. but the poor fish is gonna suffocate in that bag over the weekend...i can't help that. he could just as easily have been eaten by a bigger fish in the wild. i'm not going back to work. i live in queens and work in the bronx--that means wait for a bus, then take an hour-long train ride. i worked all week, i've already changed, i want my pizza, and i want to curl up with my book! but suppose the fish is rare--i'll never forgive myself if i find out that i'm never likely to see another one again. well, i'll go online and see what info i can find.

later that evening, as i exit the subway station near the courthouse, i stop for a whopper, fries, and a coke, then re-enter the courthouse. i do a partial water change on the bag, then settle in with my book and my dinner to wait for my ride home to get off from work at 10:00. he'll be coming in from queens, and he doesn't know that i'm back at work because i forgot my fish...


the fish now resides happily in one of my dad's tanks with my pair of o. mossambicus, my mystery female livebearer, my dad's black tetras, his 7 yr old striped raphael(used to be mine), and until just recently a red-eye tetra--which i saw heading down the gullet of the male o. mossambicus a week or so ago.(my dad hasn't noticed, yet.)

http://www.planetcatfish.com/ilibrary/bagridae/mystus/21_f.htm

[SGypsyMermaid]

beaker--i cracked up when i read about your bichir diving into a bucket of water :lol:

[jonah]

I added 3 yellow tailed loaches to my 125g. The smallest one was 5" so I thought they'd be okay. Anyway, I get this call at work from the wife, telling me my "clown" loach killed it's self and she couldn't find the other. She found the fish 12 feet from the only possible opening, the return from the ac500's. The size of the opening almost gaurantees that it climbed into the filter and then jumped out onto the tank top. It also moved around several pieces of furniture to get to it's final destination.

So I spent the whole day at work bummed out about my clowns that I've had for a couple of years. When I get home I found out it was one of the yellow tails. She didn't know what the fish was, just that it was a loach. A second yellow tail had got out and ended up behind my marine tank 8 feet away. I ended up putting the last one in the garage 125g where he'd be the biggest fish and it lasted about 48 hours before I found it on the garage floor.

[CichlidPete]

Bumble Bee Catfish Story

A few months ago I was in the LFS and the owner asked me to adopt a Bumble Bee Cat that was returned because small fish were disapperaring from the community tank he lived in! DUH. The fish was like 6 inches long and the width of his mouth is almost 2 inches. Can't imaging where those little fishies were going. I told the owner I'd take him the next week after rearrainging some fish.

When I went to pick him up the tank he was in was empty. The owner said he had his helper move the fish from that tank to another one but we still couldn't find it. I asked if he had told her there was a cat in the tank and he said "No". The girl had gone home a few hours earlier so we couldn't ask what she did with it. As I was leaving I decided to check the area where they wask out tanks and there lying in the corner of the old tank in about 1/2 inch of water was the cat. He looked dead but I scooped him up and ran inside and tossed him into a tank. Within 5 seconds he started racing about the tank looking for a spot to hide.

As far as the missing fish from the begining of the story...I got to observe this guys hunting style today. He lays in his hole in the log with his head sticking out. When dinner swims by close enough he just opens his mouth real fast, his body never moves, and the prey gets sucked in. I saw him get a half dozen convict fry in like 5 minutes this way.

[SGypsyMermaid]

whoo hooo! guess the rope fish won't be the only one feasting if i put fry into the tank that houses him and other denizens...including a 7 year old bumble bee cat!(who hardly ever shows himself--now i know why :twisted: )

[SGypsyMermaid]

ok, here's the one about the buttikofferi and the electric catfish:

it all started with the buttikofferi murdering all of his siblings while he was still just a little guy. he also killed off the other fish in that 37 gal. tank. since i wanted more than one fish in that tank, i moved him to a 10 gal tank in the bedroom(not realizing how big he was gonna get, because i hadn't done my homework). he looked so lonely in the tank by himself(of course, we all know that most cichlids don't like company) that i started to wonder what would make a nice tankmate for him, something that could withstand his murderous tendencies.

one day while cruising the tanks of one of my favorite lfs, i spotted the perfect candidate: a juvenile electric catfish! i happily purchased the little guy and brought him home to meet his new roommate. as you can imagine, the buttikofferi tried to eject him, immediately--but boy, did he get a surprise when he tried it--ZAPP!! well, he tried it a few more times, before he finally gave up.

things went along swimmingly for a while, and both fish continued to grow,and grow, and grow...then there came a time when the electric catfish decided that he wanted ALL of the food for himself, and to heck with the buttikofferi. so everytime that the buttikofferi tried to feed, he'd zap him! well now, being the ornery character that he was, the buttikofferi was not about to take this treatment lying down...so, every time that the cat zapped him, he rammed the cat, and quite naturally got zapped, again--which caused him to jump out of the way, usually hitting the hood--BANG!! CRASH!! BOOM!!

naturally, this situation could not be allowed to continue since i was getting tired of water splashing on my bed, and crashes waking me suddenly out of a sound sleep...so i decided to return them to the lfs. enter my compassionate dad, who felt that banishment to the lfs was a terrible punishment, and "besides", he said, "you raised them up from little guys. i'll take them." so off we went to the lfs to purchase a 20 gal. long and a 10 gal(to replace the one that my gremlin nephew threw a toy truck into. that nephew plays little league and consistently hits line drives that will take your head off!) to add to his existing 20 gal. we removed the fish from his 20 gal to the 10 gal, then placed each of the combatants in his own 20 gal. tank, side by side, so that they could stick their tongues out at each other, but otherwise do no harm.

[fredzebra]

hi gypsy, im glad you came up with happying "ending" for them both. im wondering if the electricity from that cat is enough to kill another fish? also, interesting that the cichlid initially didnt know about the cat's defense system. i would guess they are native to different parts of the world? salt water fish instictively know that anemones or even salt water catfish are poisonous. i once kept triggerfish (that killed anything that moved), later added some saltwater cats (poisonous) having the same idea you had. unfortunately the triggers were aware that the cats were poisoness and also knew where the cats carried its poison (i think in the tail, pectoral fins and whiskers). the triggers attacked and killed all three cats, knowing just where to attack the fishes body.

[SGypsyMermaid]

hiya, fred!...wow--that is interesting that the triggers knew the cats' achille's heel...i think that the buttikofferi is a west african riverine fish(gotta check that), and the electric cat is from...ta--dah!!--lake tanganyika(so the lake cichlids would probably do a job on him!) i think that the electric cat's zap is probably only enough to stun a fish or chase it away, though it might be lethal for a very small fish. the zap of an electric [i:defd5188a7]eel[/i:defd5188a7], however, could kill a person.

[Overawed]

Well besides seeing the whole mouth brooding mating ritual between two red zebras for the first time a few months ago and being completely fascinated, I have to say that my Bala Shark takes the cake. Back when I was a lousy aquarist (like I am good now haha) I hardly ever cleaned the tank. I had a load of big SA's in my 90 with a Bala. Once I let out too much water and the Bala jumped from the bottom of the tank and landed in a 16x20 photography tray I converted to aqua use (it was a wash tray).
I put the critter back in, and to this day I am very careful around him/her because its 8 inches long.

[SGypsyMermaid]

to see the wildest fish tale ever, go here:

http://www.fishforums.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=000013;p=

[SGypsyMermaid]

i got my first rope(snake)fish about 17 years ago. i knew nothing about the fish, since i did no research before purchasing it. i just thought that it was soooo cute--it reminded me of the sea monster from the old "beanie and cecil" cartoon(you younguns will have no idea what i'm referring to). anyway, after a short period, the fish disappeared without a trace. it was years before i learned that this fish is a very accomplished escape artist. it has an auxilliary breathing apparatus that allows it to breathe atmospheric air, so it can survive out of water for several hours. i also didn't know that the poor fish required live food--they don't recognize dead things as food(they have poor eyesight, anyway). so this poor fellow probably went in search of a meal. the next time that i bought one, i knew about the live food, so he hung around a little longer, but i still didn't know about the 'escape' thing; eventually he disappeared, also. i found his skeleton months later, behind the couch.

the next time that i bought one, i knew about the food and the escaping, so had him a good long while before i made the mistake of adding a trio of jewel fish to the tank. one night , i went out partying instead of coming directly home from work. i guess the jewels were pissed off and hungry because i came home to find a 14 inch skeleton draped across a plastic plant!

now, i've finally gotten it right and my last rope fish is about eight years old; and he even eats pellets and krill now--he's been around long enough to have discovered that some of those dead things that float by his nose are edible.

http://www.kalielsprairedogs.homestead.com/files/draco.jpg
http://www.akwafoto.pl/alfabet/e/erpeto_calabar/foto/
erpetoichthys_calabaricus.jpg
http://sunflower.bio.indiana.edu/~sholtzma/fish3.html
http://www.tropicalfishcentre.co.uk/Loaches.htm

p.s--i've also discovered that they are very sociable, and prefer to have conspecific company.

[kameronesdiablo]

I have a few ..but I will try to make them really short...yeah..me make something short :rofl: my husband would die if he heard that..

1. I too have a bala story.. Had two balas and one day i noticed i only had one. I cleaned the tank and checked everywhere and took everything out..no fish..about 2 month later I was walking by the tank to the kitchen and out of the corner of my eye I saw a silver flash. I stopped to turn to see what it was and I did not see anything..I turned to walk to the kitchen and thats when I saw him...bala was lying on the floor (about 5 feet from tank!!) ...I freaked out because not but 2 feet away was my pitt bull mix...she looked up and saw the fish and started heading over...I was in shock and my husband ran in front of the dog and grabbed the fish and threw him in...I realized then that the first fish must have done the same and became a lovely snack for my silly pup!

2. When the second bala passed away, I actually was very attached to him so I burried him outside in my rose garden. The next day when I went to prune the roses, I saw a big gaping EMPTY hole where I had buried the bala...silly dog must have dug him up and gulp!!

3. I have a pretty aggressive Red Zebra and sometimes my husband jokingly calls her the B word...well she loves to chase and harrass everyone but one day my husband bought some new fish and one was a Krib..well the RZ has this huge hollow log thing that is HERS and the krib realized that so he went to find his own place...there was a pot on the other side of the tank and he quite liked it. Well, not wanting anyone to be happier than she was the RZ tried to sneak into the pot and ended up head to head with the krib..since she was use to getting her way, I guess she assumed he would just get out and let her hang....ooooooooohhhhh was she mistaken...the krib grabbed her jaw and PUSHED her out and kept pushing her [b:e85b1808e7]to almost the other side of the tank[/b:e85b1808e7]...my husband and I sware she had this look on her face :jaw:

4. I think I posted this one before somewhere and I think I have posted #3 somewhere to...but oh well...
I also have a chinese algee eater catfish ...well once again Miss Thang RZ decided that the chinese was too hyper and bugging her..so she started picking on him...well, as you know chinese are like wiggle worms and he was quite upset so he smacked his tail end and popped her dead in the face... needless to say..she never has even bothered or acknowledged him ever again!!!! My husband fell over laughing his butt off when he saw this..

I think that is pretty much it...lame I know..sorry...

[SGypsyMermaid]

not lame at all, kam--i even had a non-fish person reading over my shoulder laughing. :lol: :lol:

[merlyn2221]

My story is about a 3 year old, gorgeous, red and blue, double finned male Betta my father had. Since my parents were in the process of moving, I took the fish for six months or so while they showed their house.
One day my husband and I went out for about 5 hours. We come home to find the Betta's bowl in the middle of the living room floor, rocks and plants everywhere, but no Betta. We look and look, because I have cats, you see, and figured it might have ended up being a toy for one of them. Finally after about a half an hour we gave up looking, thinking some one of my cats has had a tasty snack.
I sit down on the couch and I notice them all (cats) still looking at the fish cabinet, like they were when we got home. Actually they were staring [i:76fdeacb9c]under[/i:76fdeacb9c] the fish cabinet. Then it dawns on me! Oh my God, the Betta must be under the fish cabinet (and we had already looked there!). By this point in time, paws are reaching under the cabinet to get the fish and I am screaming for my husband to get a bowl with dechlorinated water.
The cabinet is about 16" deep, with a space of about 3'" under it, and it is not the cleanest of places since only the hose of the vacuum fits under there. I get the flash light and look again; the Betta is flopping about 13" away from the front of the cabinet. Now I have a problem, I can't reach in to get it and neither can my husband. I don't want to drag it out in a net, because it would cause further damage to it's slime coat, so I send my husband back to the kitchen to get a spatula in between picking up rocks. With it, and stuffing my arm under the cabinet as far as I can, I spatula the fish off the carpet (he is covered with fuzz and cat hair) and I pick him up to put him in the bowl. I get the Stress Coat and pour it in my hand, then grab him in the bowl and start rubbing the fuzz/hair off him. In the mean time my husband is continuing to pick up rocks off the floor. He tells me there isn't too much water, though, which seems weird, since the held a gallon. Most of it must have dried up, since the carpet is just damp. I'm thinking, "This fish has been there for hours!":shock:
I put him back in his bowl, load up the Stress Coat, add some aquarium salt and hope for the best. I fully expected to see him floating in the morning after such an ordeal, but he wasn't. He even ate the next day.
My husband and I figure that it had to be at least 3 hours that he was under there, and boy was he lucky! I don't know how he got there, but it saved him from being a cat snack. He lived on a year and a half after that before he died of old age.
Moral: Keep labyrinthe fishes, that way if they escape they can air breathe!

[SGypsyMermaid]

:D :D :D great story!!!

[Adam]

I have two kind of funny stories. Well not really, but they were scary at the moment anyways :)

-I had had a golden crab, one of the completely aquatic ones, or so the LFS told me. Well one day, looking at my aquarium, I noticed that he was gone, and so the entire night I was looking for him, but with no avail. Finally, after we had given up, I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth and I hear a scratching, and it's coming from underneath this chest. And so naturally I think it's my crab, and it is, trying to dig a burrow into the hard floor. I took him back to the aquarium, and plopped him in, but he just floated around, still alive, and the next day he was dead.

-I have newts, one that is 8 years old, and 2 firebelly toads that are 8 years old. And I bought, stupidly now that I think of it, two friends for the newt. I didn't want anymore, because they live so long, but they looked so good. Anyways, the two, within a month of each other escaped, never to be found again, except that one day there was a tail sticking out of my cat's mouth :evil:

-The ice storm hit our house, and we moved into our grandparent's house, and while everyone was cooking on the fire and melting snow to flush the toilet with, we were sitting around watching pay per view. Anyways, I freaked out about my fish, and we had warm towels and everything around on them, and they spent a couple days in a fish bowl, all twenty of them. It's funny, because none of those have died.

-Jnorris, you aren't the only one that has cat problems, just think of cat hair with algae on it, I hadn't noticed it until it turned green.

-My pleco is still MIA, I ended up taking apart half of the rocks, and I still haven't found him, he's not in the filters or on the glass, I just don't know where he went, plecoside?

[SGypsyMermaid]

yeccchhh!!! what? a fur ball in the tank? :shock:

[Adam]

No, it was just a little strand of fur, mini (the cat) sheds like there is no tomorrow, and one got in there, and it turned green :) the fish didn't want to eat it though. Have you ever heard of ghost shrimp trying to spin some sort of web? one of mine is carrying eggs, and i don't know what to do with them help me :)

[SGypsyMermaid]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreshwaterShrimp/join

[tankgirl g]

OK, so I'm originally from Louisville, attended college in Ohio & then moved to Colorado & finally back to Louisville again. I had fish the whole time & developed some pretty interesting methods of travelling with them. Clyde, a goldfish, lived in Ohio, Canada, Kentucky and Colorado with me...! So naturally when I moved out west for what I thought was going to be for quite some time, I decided Clyde needed some friends and a larger tank. So I bought a 20 gallon tank and got him some fishy friends. They were all goldfish of one type or another.

During the two years that I spent in Colorado, these fish got huge. The largest one, Big Fish, suddenly started doing flips one day and then was swimming completely upside-down several days later. He had a swim-bladder problem and I figured that his days were numbered. I was wrong. When the time came for me to head back to Louisville, I had to figure out how in the world to create a container large enough to transport my fish, including Big Fish, who was about 6" and swimming upside-down. So I went to the hardware store & got two 5-gallon paint buckets with lids. I donned my drill and put some air holes in the lids and got a bunch of anacharis plant to put in with the fish.

After loading all of my belongings into a towable U-Haul, I got my dog, rats, gerbil and the fish into the car (an SUV). When it came time to stop for the night, I got a hotel room with an outside room door so that I could smuggle in the critters (dogs were OK, but I don't think too many people travel with as many animals as I had in the car!). Anyway, when I finally got all of my pets inside, I went to open the buckets and install my portable air pump for the night. To my horror, all of the fish in one of the buckets were belly-up and the water was blue! I guess that bucket had been previously used at the hardware store for some type of chemical. Big Fish, in the other bucket, was fine. So there I was at around midnight, with several big dead fish and the upside-down one still alive.

Against my better judgement, I tried to flush the smaller of the dead fish. He went down. So then I tried the next larger one. He got stuck...really stuck. So now I had a couple of dead fish, the upside-down one and an overflowing hotel toilet. I gave up & the next morning prepared some burial-bags for the other dead fish & had to put them in the dumpster. The toilet, I'm sure, yielded quite a surprise for the maid later that day...

By the time I got back to Louisville, Big Fish was the only one left. He went on to live for about another year or so...upside-down.

I've since given up on travelling with fish. I now have cichlids.

[Overawed]

Wow, and I thought I've had some bad moves.

[SGypsyMermaid]

:mrgreen: :rofl: :mrgreen: a great story!!

[jonah]

It was a pretty good story. :lol:

[Overawed]

This is sort of sad :cry:

But there is a moral.


I have a 20g tank which is mostly female Red Eurekas. I had my female Placidachromis Phenochilus (Josette) in there as well. My oldest female Eureka (Trixie) her abdomen was swollen with eggs. So, Josette started biting at Trixie's bottom. Initially I thought it would pass, until I noticed Trixie's fins all ripped up. So, I decided that it was time to move Josette back into the 55g where her mate resides.

Josette went back into the tank and I forgot to take her mortal enemy out, a O.Lithobates with a very aggresive attitude. Especially towards Josette, for some reason, Otto (the Lithobates) does not like any fish to get near his buddy Barnabus (the big male Phenochilus).

So while Josette is getting beat up, I decide to put some tweenie Red Eureka albino and Placidachromis fry into the female 20. I am trying to make room in a 10g to place a pregnant Red Emp.

My neighbor called the placing of the fish into the 20g "The Graduation"

My big mistake: I had not fed the 20g residents yet. I feed them 3 times a day, and they are on a schedule. They knew it was past feeding time, so they thought the brightly colored Red Eurekas were dinner. I released the fry one by one into the tank and then to clean the net.

Thats when I hear my neighbor screaming that two of my fish had the graduates in their mouths! These fish in this tank are not bigger than 2 inches, yet 2 of the biggest had brother Red Eureka frys dangling from their over-opened mouths. I quickly netted them and prepared a rescue bag to get these fry back to their original tank.

I had to pull each one from the mouths of their brothers. I was very worried about shock and temp difference. The two frys dorsal fins were completely ripped and one's rear tail was completely gone. I put them back in their tank after they had come to the same temp. They seemed fine, but I added Melafix salt and removed carbon. Also brought the tank up to 85F. I checked them through the night and they progressively got worse. By morning both were dead. :cry: I felt like a murderer. The Placidachromis fry got away with a few scratches. They are doing alright now.

Josette is doing better now too, with Otto removed to the 90g. He seems to like it in the more aggresive tank. Hes even bullying a Chipoake. Josette is not eatting though, so I am very concerned. I just fed them and she took a bit of food then spit it out. I am posting at the clinic about this.

I've learned to be uber-careful with Albino fry. They are just too bright to be introducing into a tank at feeding time. They also cannot see too well, and need a less competetive envioronment to feed in.

[SGypsyMermaid]

unfortunately, fry are famous for preying on each other.

[aharris]

Actually it's my mom's. When she and my dad were out walking next to a local resevoir one freezing cold morning, they noticed a splash of color in one rapidly freezing puddle. Turns out it was an old bait goldfish.

Mom decided to rescue him and all they had to put him in was a soft drink cup. They dumped out the previous contents and scooped up water from the puddle along with the goldfish who was so large his tail stuck out of the cup. He made it back to the dorms that way.

Then they had to find a place to put him overnight so they grabbed a janitor's bucket out of the cleaning closet, filled it with tap water, and dumped in the fish. He spent the night like that. The next day they bought him a standard goldfish bowl which became his home for the next three or four years.

During his tenure in the bowl, he never once received conditioned tap water. He used to spit marbles into the side of the bowl and you could hear that sound all over the house. The family cat attacked him and gave him an enormous gash across his nose that apparently healed over just fine. One night my grandfather heard a strange noise in the bathroom and found him flopping around nearly dried out on the floor. That didn't kill him either.

Apparently, he died peacefully in his bowl. He had by that time been named Moby Dick. And my mom still talks about him to this day.

That story makes me cringe knowing what I do now, but can you imagine how tough that bait fish must have been?!

[Boilermaker]

Thats one tough goldfish, A.Harris:)
O.K. I finally moved this post:

I didn't know if this belongs here or S.Gypsys wild fish tales.
Anyways when I worked at the LFS years ago this customer come in with a giant plecostomus in a cooler. I told him I could only go 5.00 cause a fish that size would never sell this pleco had to go 15".
Well I set the cooler on a stool reached in the cooler with both hands grabbed the pleco who was pretty calm, right when I got him to the tank he squirmed out of my hands hit the floor, the customer dove first I dove second knocking the cooler full of aquarium water all over the customers head
After getting him a towel to dry off and a thousand apologies, I believe I give him 25.00 for the pleco. Man it was funny though I wish someone could of got it on video

[SGypsyMermaid]

that one made me laugh a second time! definitely a wild fish tale!:D

aharris--are you sure that that goldfish is really dead?:razz:

[aharris]

I hope so!

I wish I could have seen the pleco upset. :rofl2:

[merlyn2221]

I go to the lfs to pick up some fish since they are moving, and I bring with me the dead A. calvus black inkfin I got the day before to show the African guy. It is really busy. After I show him the fish, the girl puts the frozen dead fish in the bottom of the bag with a group of zebra obliquidens and some other stuff I got. I go back into the fish room to find my husband. As we go to leave, the bag has disappeared. The girl at the front panics because I had like $300 worth of stuff on the counter marked N/C (no charge) and she wasn't paying attention. Someone else had taken all my fish and put them into a styrofoam crate and never told her, but the first bag was still missing. She starts to call all the customers who were there around the time I was and asks them if they had fish they didn't buy, including the dead one. No one does. I remember someone before me getting saltwater supplies. Luckily they were still in the store and had put my one bag (dead fish and all) in the car with theirs.
The lady was so grossed out that there was a dead fish in the bag she made me lift it out of her trunk. She looked at me like I was crazy when I told her what I was going to do with it.

[SGypsyMermaid]

what are you going to do with it?

[merlyn2221]

I always bury them next to my rose bushes. Makes great fertilizer and every time a flower blooms I remember all my beauties gone to the great aquarium in the sky.

:)

[Poet8102]

The incredible disappearing convict.

Okay, so I go to the lfs and pick up 5 cons, 3females and 2males, bring them home and put them in their temp. home a 10g tank. All seems well for the first two days, and then I go out for most of the day on a weekend. Fed the little guys before I left. When I come home I only see 4 in the tank. I start tearing apart the room looking for the convict that must have jumped out of the tank, but to no avail. This guy just completley disappeared. And it's not like I have a cat or dog that would have come and ate him. Oh yeah there was no dead fish, fins, scales any thing in the tank either.

[SGypsyMermaid]

baby fish are pretty adamant about not missing any meals. it's been my experience that if you're tardy with their supper, they draw straws to see who's going to be the meal!:rofl:

[spikedsparkles]

Ok long story.. but hey in a way its funny, but it just wasn't at the time..

Ok well i've been having my tank set up for around a month now, only had plecos in it since i was wanting to cycle my tank, and thats the only fish i could think of that would go ok with my cichlids that i would eventually add in later.. Well the day was going good, had just unpluged everything off the tank because the power strip that i was useing stoped working for some reason and i was going to the store later that day to get a new one along with some fish.. well i was sitting at my pc with my head phones on and my pc is in the same room as my tank.. well i was listening to a bjork song, and all of a sudden a heard water, well i didn't remember the sound of water being in that song, but hey its bjork, *you can never tell with her*... well i waited a second and it got loader so i turned around and a 4 foot streem of water was shooting out my tank, then i noticed that the right end of the tank that was leaking, was because the seem of the tank was coming unglued.. So i jumped up and grabed onto it and held it shut, well the longer i waited, and more the glue was letting go.. I couldn't get let it go because every type of electronic equipment, including the pc was in there, along with the new scanner and printer lying on the floor.. to make it even worse the area that it was pooring was where the power strip "was", so it was a good thing i had taken it off early or i wouldn't be here telling you this story.. lol

well to make it even worse "as if it could get worse", i soon found out that my dad along with everyone else that was home at the time was not hearing my screams for help. And believe me i was screaming... I was getting REALLY tired and believe me holding togeather a 55g tank togeather isn't the easyist, you litterally have to hold all your body weight agenced it.. well needless to say i was standing there holding the tank togeather screaming my butt off for, "45 minutes", and thats not being dramatic, i had a clock in that room and for some reason i couldn't take my eyes off of it the hole time... luckly my dad came in to use the bath room and heard my horse voice trying to scream.. by thin i could barly talk little lown scream.. but he heard me kick the wall a few times since i couldn't say anything by thin.. and we got a half a roll of duct tape around it and it held it togeather long enough for us to get a hose pipe into the room to pump the water out... And that was yesterday.... and i'm as sore as all getout right now... and i can barly talk.. well thats my story.. "read it".. "tell it", "forget about it"..

thanks for listening.. :rofl:

[cichgirl]

Okay, I had to chime in - this just happened. I had to put 2 big troublemakers - a melanochromis johanni and a pseudotropheus lombardoi - together in a 30 gallon to maintain peace in my other tank. They got a divider, because they can't live together - these two are the meanest, most relentless fighters that I have. This is a temporary home until I set up my 125 - it never ends :).. I went away for the weekend to celebrate a late Christmas with my folks. I came back and stood in horror when I saw the wrong fish on the wrong side. The divider was still secured and I looked for my johanni. I couldn't figure it out. Finally I looked on the other side and saw him happy as a clam. There were no injuries - I couldn't believe it. I still don't know how they did it (other than jump). But I am glad that they worked out their move themselves without killing eachother.

[SGypsyMermaid]

you realize, of course, that they're only getting along in an attempt to confuse you...:hmm: :uh: :razz:

[cichgirl]

:D I just wish I witnessed the actual swapping of sides. My guess is the pl (digger) took over the mj (bruiser)'s side and, like a tyrant, digger tossed bruiser through the air and over to the other side. They probably then immediately forgot how they did it and therefore haven't done it since. Man, there's a definate testosterone abundance between them. They are pure evil! :edance:

[SGypsyMermaid]

ohhhh kaaay! i lent my copy of cichlids and all the other fishes of lake malawi to a buddy. he left the book on the floor and went out. when he returned, a faulty canister filter had drained all of the water from one of his tanks...p.s.--he had to replace my book. ok, no problem...i found one online at a great price(this past spring). so anyway, tonight, i'm looking for a fish that i'm trying to identify for 'north', but while i'm looking, i decide to take a look at aulonocara kandeensis(i've always wanted them and i just got some juvies.) i start reading: " A kandeensis wurde der Art A. maylandei zugeorgnet..." HUNH!!! how could i have not noticed that the book was in german ? !:confused: well, as it turns out, most of the book is in english, but pages 60-80 are in the original german...guess that's why i got such a good deal on the book!:drink: :nervous: :hmm: :uh: :rofl2:

[tom]

Dieser post erinnert mich an M. Twain (mit Entschuldigungen zu unseren deutschsprechenden Freunden):


Ich bin ja der treueste Freund der deutschen Sprache -- Und nie habe ich das Verlangen gehabt, der edlen Sprache zu schaden, im Gegentheil, nur gewünscht, sie zu verbessern; ich wollte sie blos reformiren. Es ist der Traum meines Lebens gewesen. Ich wurde blos die Sprachmethode -- die uppige, weitschweifige Konstruktion -- zusammenrucken; die ewige Parenthese unterdrücken, abschaffen, vernichten; die Einfuhrung von mehr als dreizehn Subjekten in einen Satz verbieten; das Zeitwort so weit nach vorne rücken, bis man es ohne Fernrohr entdecken kann. Mit einem Wort ich möchte Ihre geliebte Sprache vereinfachen, auf dasz wenn Sie sie zum Gebet brauchen, man sie dort oben versteht....:hehe:

[SGypsyMermaid]

here's your mark twain reference:
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html#x1

i loved studying german for all of the reasons that he hated it. it was like proving theorems or putting together a puzzle. my favorite word is 'geschwindeskeitsbegrenzung'(speed limit)...imagine trying to read that sign on the autobahn while travelling at 100 mph!:D

[barramundi]

:D


The funniest thing I used to see was my Barra, named Boof. He was a dark grey colour, but when he got excited, he'd turn a shimmering silver with an intense white stripe down his forehead. Anyway, my little cousin like to bring Boof a goldfish every now & then. So we'd pop this goldfish in the tank, & it'd swim up to Boof thinking "wow, a big silver goldfish". Meanwhile Boof is so excited he's actually shaking & so silver he's shiny, & then... BOOF!!... a cloud of bubbles & no more goldfish, just Boof chewing away (with his gills) & gradually changing colour back to his normal dark grey attire. Quite awe-inspiring to watch. :eek:

[Ding]

My YoYo Loach beats up my Firemouth!!!!:nervous: Whats with that :confused:

[peggyjean]

:dance: hi my story is really nothing i do believe is cool but i have one male ropefish and one female and they said never keep just two ropefish without at least having 3 or so or when wanting to breed is impossible to do and if u want to try to have at least 6 well ofcourse i only have 2 and well amazingly i know have like hundreds of babys but their so small that u can't really see them that well well thats my story

[SGypsyMermaid]

that's great! first time i've ever heard of them being bred in captivity. can you describe your tank set-up?

[Photorah]

seedy and i have auloncara jacobfrebergi eureka and we had a holding fish she was doing realy well didnot seem to mind the water changes in her growout tank but one day she jumped when i went to do a water change. With a mouth full of fry. luckaly i found her i rinsed my hand and scoped her up but amazingly she did not loose a fry not a one

[SGypsyMermaid]

sounds like she didn't want to raise her kids in that tankhood.:razz:

[Photorah]

mabey but her new brood is dinner for the fry she didnt loose that time and mabey her current tank mates if there is to many we will see if any survive

[muffinwitch]

Just read all these and had to add! I loved all of them but Spikedsparkles was really funny because I had a water bed mattress break and me and my ex-husband were holding it and screaming for my mother who lived below us.............she came in about 10 minutes:jaw: ..............

Anyhow, we have a male axolotis(if you don't know it's a mexican water dog type creature) anyhow I put a cory cat in there to help clean, not thinking he'd eat it, and not knowing that they are spiny! Well me and my boyfriend had to perform surgery and yank it out, well the axolotl wasn't happy we were taking his meal and he kept closing his mouth! It was a fight but after 5 minutes we got it. Thank god he's a good boy and lets my bf hold him all the time otherwise it would have been worse.

My other one is when I bought my bf a 20" red line snake head for christmas. We brought the monster home and my bf's friend was with us because I wanted nothing to do w/ this moving him to a tank thing! He's sitting in his box and we're adding water hear and there, and he's being real calm, and we're commenting on how calm he is..........well the men go stand over the box looking at him deciding on how to best net him, and he looks at my bf, looks to the left of him and shoots like a rocket up in the air and on the floor and under the futon bed. I, of course scream,
my bf's friend is screaming directions and bf is trying to grab him in the net......he finally got him and we plopped him in the tank and pheww he was fine! I'm thinking the whole time "omg what did I do?!" The massivness and power of a huge fish like that is amazing! We saddly only had him 4 months when he had to be fishy-sat at a friends house and he jumped out twice, second time killed him. And that was with about 40-50#'s of weight on the top! I miss him but was also very afraid of him!

[SGypsyMermaid]

great stories, muffin...thanks for adding them.:)

[barramundi]

Funniest thing just happened to a mate of mine. He has 3x 6ft tanks in a 3tier stand. Looks great with Malawi's in the top, Tangs in the middle & S.Americans in the bottom. Anyway he works part time in a LFS & picked up a 6inch Electric Blue that was traded in during the evening on a late night trading day. Anyway he was really tired & it was about 10pm when he got home, having started work 7am, & in his daze introduced the Electric Blue to the S.American tank instead of the Malawians. As he walked away he realised what he'd done & spun back around to get the nets & pull him out, only to see his 8inch Green Terro swimming off with the Electric Blues head & the rest of the tanks inhabitants in a seething ball obviously with the rest of the Electric Blue in the centre & shrinking rapidly. He was telling me about the next day, obviously devastated, & I failed him as a good firend cos I just cracked up laughing:lol2: . Thankfully he realised the funny side of what happened too so we are still mates!!!

[SGypsyMermaid]

poor guy...that's like doing a water change on a fry tank, then realizing an hour or so later that you forgot the dechlor...too late!:(

[barramundi]

Originally posted by SGypsyMermaid
poor guy...that's like doing a water change on a fry tank, then realizing an hour or so later that you forgot the dechlor...too late!:(

Oh no. Did that happen to you or someone you know? Man that'd suck!!

[SGypsyMermaid]

it happened to a couple of people that i know, but i've done it on non-fry tanks and lost adult fish.

[SGypsyMermaid]

i recently won an auction for a wild group of leopard ctenopoma. i figured i'd put them in my bathtub pond and see if i could get a spawn. due to some miscommunications, the fish ended up spending the weekend in the mailroom at work. when i opened the bag, the fish were all lying on their sides at the bottom of the bag breathing slowly. sometimes the fish behave that way when they are shipped with a sedative in their water. i quickly did a partial water change--this usually perks up drugged fish right away--no change. over the next half hour, i did a couple more water changes, still with no improvement. at lunchtime, i rushed out to the petstore for some aquarium salt and a battery-operated pump. the fish would occasionally come to the surface for a bubble of atmospheric air, but then they'd go back to laying on their sides. as i peered into the bag, wondering if they were going to make it, it occurred to me that they looked like a pile of dead leaves...LEAVES!! the leopard ctenopoma aka african leaf fish plays the same camouflage game as the south american leaf fish: 'pretend to be a leaf and small things will swim into your mouth and big things won't see you'. when i got them home and finished acclimating them to the pond water, i released them into the pond, and the erstwhile 'dead leaves' exploded into action, grabbing mouthfuls of endler's livebearers. boy did i feel stupid...punked by a bunch of fish!

http://homepages.tesco.net/~davyreynolds/fishindex/fish/C/ctenopoma_acutirostre.htm

[fish speaker]

My daughter had a small (10 gallon) tank in her room, which after the events of this tale has become a hospital tank, with the prior occupants now in my larger tanks. Since my daughter often has important, teenager things to do, she is not an ideal fishkeeper, and I often had the job of changing water, scraping algae, etc. in her tank. The fish in the tank were a group of 4 paradise gouramis, and 1 rubber-lipped pleco. The pleco often stayed out of sight, being shy...preferring to hide under a fake-coral ornament or behind a fake rock in the back of the tank.

One day, Elizabeth told me that she was sure the pleco was dead, since she had not seen it in weeks. I searched the tank, finding nothing. When I pulled the rock out of the back of the tank, lots of gunk came drifting out of a hole in the back of the rock...enough for me to assume that the little pleco had died in the rock.

I decided to make sure, so I pulled the rock out of the tank, and took it to the bathroom sink. I rinsed out the rock (it was one of these hollow, plastic things with a hole about 2" across in the back, which allows the rock to fill with water so it will not float), getting more and more of the gunk. Suddenly, after much time had passed, an extra-large something came out of the hole in the back of the rock. As it landed in the sink, I realized that this was the pleco...alive and well! Before I could react, he was gone...down the drain. I did manage to turn off the water, and then started to panic.

Fortunately, I had just replaced a couple of bathroom faucets in another bathroom, so I ran downstairs to get the pipe wrench. I dashed back up the stairs, and started to take apart the pipes. I was sure that the pleco was swimming in the bottom of the trap, and that was going to be a lot of work for my amateur plumbing skills and tools. After I removed the piece that stops the drain, I decided to go ahead and clean out the accumulation of “gunk” that I found in the pipe. Imagine my surprise when I looked down the drain from the sink, and saw the pleco in the pipe, hanging on my those lips. I managed to dislodge him (after many attempts), and was lucky that he didn’t drop into the open pipe down below...instead landing on a box of some sort. I grabbed the box, ran back to the tank, and managed to get him to let go and drop into the water.

This little guy is still very small (this all only happened in July of this year), but he’s in my 37-gallon tank, where I still very rarely see him. But he IS there. Because of this story, I HAD to name him, and I think it’s appropriate that my little rubber-lipped pleco (1 of 2 that I have) is now named Draino.

[SGypsyMermaid]

Originally posted by fish speaker
... I HAD to name him, and I think it’s appropriate that my little rubber-lipped pleco (1 of 2 that I have) is now named Draino.

:rofl: great story!

[skiitswitch]

nice! :xmas3:

[fish speaker]

This is one of those times that I really wish I had a better digital camera (currently on my wish list). This isn't really a "tale," but it was just about one of the funniest things I've ever seen, and involved my OTHER rubber-lipped pleco. This one is in my 20-gallon tank, which appropriately enough has a cheesy castle ornament. This ornament is a little interesting because it has a "stream" running under a bridge below the castle. The stream is a pane of glass over an airstone, so the bubbles give the effect of flowing water. The space under the glass isn't very big, and it tends to get a nice buildup of algae...or, rather, it used to get that. I took this picture when I spotted my little pleco cleaning the glass...the UNDERside of the glass. I have now seen him do this several times. I'm just hoping that he can tell when he outgrows that job!

[SGypsyMermaid]

whoaaa...getting stuck inside that would definitely be an unpleasant experience for your little plec. btw--it doesn't look cheesy to me; i think it's pretty!:)

[fish speaker]

Along the lines of getting stuck in that ornament: I had 4 paradise fish sharing that tank with a few others. An algae bloom cut down my visibility so that I couldn't keep track of the fish for a couple of days. When I got the water cleared, I only had 2 paradise fish, so I started looking. One of them had previously "hidden" behind the back of the ornament (very small space between the ornament and the glass), so I looked there first. Sure enough, I could see a couple of shapes. The first one turned out to be a corpse. The second one was bent into a "U" shape, but it darted out when I pulled the ornament out a little. He has survived for 2 days now, but he acts like he has some stiffness or injury from being bent and stuck like that for who knows how long. I may have to rethink the safety issues of this ornament in this tank. Oh well...

[Syngin]

Hehe I tried fishing my leporinus (4 inches) out of my 33 gallon in the kitchen one morning. He launched himself out of the tank across about a 3 foot span and landed in a pint glass of water that I had just poured to have with breakfast.

[punkypuffer]

WHOAH haha

[SGypsyMermaid]

i woke one morning, not too long ago, to find one of my beloved fronts head down in the rocks with just his tail sticking up. i picked up one of the long-handled grabber thingys and tried to remove him from the tank. he vigorously resisted this treatment, and turned out to be just fine. i have since discovered that this is his regular sleeping position. the other day, i noticed that another of the fronts does the same thing. they remind me of toddlers who cover their faces when playing hide 'n seek, believing that since they can't see you, you can't see them.

[Ding]

My two Yo-Yo Loaches were sucked up the in the UGF tube :bawl: bummer!
RIP Yo & Ya... mamma's sorry :oops:

[SGypsyMermaid]

sorry to hear it, ding.:(

[Ding]

Thanks SGM....they will be replaced tomorrow :D

[SGypsyMermaid]

just wanted to cross-reference this thread with the 'tales':
http://cichlidforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2270

[SGypsyMermaid]

one of my posts from another thread:

i had an ob peacock in a fry tank with month old fry. she brooded the entire time in that tank. she didn't bother the babies while she was holding, nor did she bother them once she spit. however, those little baby fish harassed the hell out of her while she was holding! they are astatotilapia aenocolor(lake edward largemouth haps). they kept crowding around her trying to get into her mouth(they were stripped from their mother), but she was having no part of it. she kept shaking her head to get them off her, then, she'd swim to another part of the tank to escape them. i know that she was happy to get out of that tank and away from those pesky babies!:nervous:

[Blair]

So I had this female Nimbochromis polystigma that I had gotten when I bought my 150 gallon tank. I had no want to breed her so I gave her to a friend. He put her in one of his tanks which had a colony of L. hongi in it (along with a colony of Tiawan reefs). The next day I get an email with thes photos:

http://www.cichlidforums.com/postimages/2004-12-18/80616-001.jpg

http://www.cichlidforums.com/postimages/2004-12-18/80616-002.jpg

LOL.........believe it or not the hongi survived.

Blair

[SGypsyMermaid]

i had a juvenile paralabidochromis chilotes do that with a small calvus...took him days to finish swallowing him. i moved him to another tank to safeguard the rest of the calvus babies.

[fish speaker]

I'll keep this short, since it's a non-cichlid story (well, it's a dither story...how's that?). I came up 1 short when counting my Australian rainbows that serve as dithers for my shy Red Devil. I thought MAYBE the RD had finally learned that food comes in shapes different than pellet. Then, I looked on the back of the tank, and there, in the exterior part of my overflow box, right below the u-tube, was the fish. It took some work to net him and get him back into the tank, mainly because I don't have a net that small. If I had been thinking, instead of in rescue mode, I'd have snapped and posted a pic. Anyway, he's fine now...:D

[Sipesh]

This one time, at band camp...

No, actually, we were at the LFS looking at thier cichlids as we often do and just for the heck of it, I went down the salt fish aisle. They have a few rows of those little tiny tanks where they hold individual small fish and crabs. At this store, those tanks are right at eye level.
Well, down the other end of the aisle, comes this loud, obnoxious woman, who begins tapping on all the tanks and commenting on the fish therein. She gets to this little blenny of some sort, and in her loud voice announces how wierd the fish is and taps on his tank. These tanks have no top and right on cue, the little fella leaps out of the tank and hits the woman square in the face. She naturally screams and runs off. The fishstore guy luckily was standing right there and scooped the little fish off the floor and put him back in his proper tank. He seemed no worse for the "attack" on the woman. I about wet my pants, it was the funniest thing to have seen at the pet store. Don't diss the fish!!!

[jonah]

Here's a freaky fish tail. I've got a small pair of convicts in a 10g on one of my tank racks. I came home from my son's baseball practice today and noticed the female was nowhere to be found. I searched everywhere and finally decided I'd end up finding her dried out 6 months from now. Just a few minutes ago I went to feed my 55g tank of rainbow cichlids that's right next to the rack. The little convict female was swimming in the midst of the rainbows. She'd jumped out of her tank and landed in the other tank with no apparent damage.

Yes, I know she's just a convict, but I still felt pretty bad about it.

[Solace]

Why did you feel pretty bad about it? Because you didn't find her dried out on the floor?

[SGypsyMermaid]

great story, sipesh! jonah, why did you feel bad? did she get hurt in the rainbow tank?

[jonah]

I felt bad because I thought she was dead and I should have covered her tank better. I heard a splashing sound earlier, but didn't notice her missing until several hours later. It was a relief to find her alive.

[SGypsyMermaid]

as a general rule, i don't feed my cichlids worms, but once in a blue moon, i let them have some as a treat. recently, i've been giving the larger fish earthworms. i moved my p. chilotes into a species tank in order to induce them to breed, and thought that the earthworms would be a good conditioning food for them. well, you you how sometimes fish are reluctant to eat unfamiliar foods, but will usually make exceptions for live foods? well, my poor sheltered babies were afraid of the worms! they would venture near to investigate, but whenever a worm wiggled in their faces, they backed off. i figured that they would eventually get the idea and eat them, but, alas, the next day, i found several dead worms, and two live ones still in their tank. the same thing happened in the tank with the a. latifasciata, and the n. maruensis, but to a lesser degree. one of the maruensis staked out the corner of the tank where one of the worms fell. he wouldn't allow any of the other fish to approach the worm, but every time that he went in for a closer look, and the worm moved, he retreated! mind you, the fronts, the malawi haps, and the other vic haps had no such reservations--they snapped up the worms like popcorn!

[Jeto]

heard of a swordtail killing an arowana. hehehehe. pretty mean swordtail

[SabrinaD]

I don't doubt it! Growing up my brother had a swordtail that killed all his females and everything else in the tank including a "whale fish" whatever that was (i remember the name not the fish lol). I think an eel of some kind finally killed it. Needless to say I never really cared to keep swords when I grew up ;).

[fish speaker]

I have a 33-long tank (same footprint as a 55, just not as high) that was drilled by the prior owner on one of the sides, close to the top. Since I am using a HOB filter, I capped off the bulkhead: no water comes out of the hole, but there is now a little cave that can be accessed by the fish. I have had a group of dwarf pike cichlids in the tank for a couple of weeks, but I made the mistake of moving some beaten-up plecos into the tank to heal...and now I have an ich outbreak. Fearing that I might have decomposing fish in the little cave, I started probing for a fish that I couldn't locate in the cave...and eventually found it at about the 2.5" mark. The fish was alive, and I have never seen anything cover 48" that fast! I think it scared me more than the fish, though...heart is still racing.

[SGypsyMermaid]

i think that i've broken at least two full hoods jumping when a large fish made a sudden move. i also dropped a rock, once--thank god, i didn't crack the tank. it's a little-known secret that i am afraid of my fish--i can't touch them, and sudden moves by large ones startle me. until i got my shoulder high rubber gloves and super large nets, my dad or my boyfriend had to come catch fish and remove rocks when i wanted to break down a tank. yes, i am a punk. :rofl:

[crazyfishlady]

I can kind of relate SGM. I wouldn't say I'm flat out afraid of my fish, but I don't like to pick up the big ones cuz I think I'll get stuck with their dorsal spines. I have no problem w/ sticking my arm into my tanks....but while some of my fish are medium large, none of them are aggressive enough to bite.
OK - I just remebered my most shameful fish keeping secret from having my saltwater tank set up.
I'm afraid of live rock.
When I was researching doing a saltwater tank I read so much about bristle worms & stinging anaemonies & mantis shrimp thet every small hole in the rock freaks me out. I won't pick it up w/o gloves.:oops: :oops: :oops:
I feel like SUCH a girl!

[SGypsyMermaid]

i can definitely understand--i don't like touching soft, squiggly things...i'm not so much afraid of being bitten as of being touched. weird, i know.:eek: :nervous: :eek:

[SabrinaD]

Well, no wonder your dad doesn't want you adding new tank LOL. I'm not too afraid of my fish. I have no problems sticking my whole arm down in a tank. I don't like touching them though because I'm afraid I might hurt them. I did grab my bumblebees to try to sex them but I was so afraid I'd suffocate them. I know, we (people) go out with a curved sharp peice of metal that we stick through a fish's lips and yank them out of the water and throw them back into the water and they survive, but somehow this is different (maybe because I paid money for them LOL).

[Jeto]

Originally posted by SGypsyMermaid
i can definitely understand--i don't like touching soft, squiggly things...i'm not so much afraid of being bitten as of being touched. weird, i know.:eek: :nervous: :eek:

same here. :D :D
that's is why i don't like big fishies. :D :D :rofl2:

[young_gun]

Well, My bro bought a climbing perch a while ago. These fish can get out of water and walk to the next pond in the wild, and can stay out of the water for quite some time. We put him in the tank on Matt's big shelf, and went to bed.

In the morning, the pizza was wriggling around... yea it sounds funny but it was!!! I blinked and took a doubletake, and there was my pizza squirming around on my floor. I went over to investigate, and found that the climbing perch had jumped out of a 29 gallon tank that was sitting on a 3 foot tall shelf, survived the drop onto the cold wood floor, walked about 8 feet out of his room, across the 5 foot long "fish hall", and 15 feet into my room, where he was stuck in the open pizza box. We quickly brushed him off and put him back, and the next day sold him to the local pet shop.

I don't think I'll ever forget the day my pizza walked.

[SGypsyMermaid]

:D welcome to the forums!

[young_gun]

Thanks!

[SGypsyMermaid]

i was looking in one of my fry tanks and noticed that 2 of the fish were considerably smaller than all the rest. now, i know that there are always runts, but these guys were really small. i moved in for a closer look and saw that they were not cichlids! they looked like guppies. how the heck did they get in there? then i realized that they must be endler's livebearers and that they must have gotten sucked up by the python during a water change, and then were deposited in the fry tank when i refilled it after a water change!

[fish speaker]

I had something very similar happen this past week, except that the strange fry was evidently in a bunch of java moss I moved from one tank into the fry tank. I thought it was an endler...turned out to be an Australian rainbowfish...but definitely wasn't a geo! :razz:

[Ray]

alright i'll bite, i woke up one night to what i thought were foot steps in the living room of our old house. I kept hearing thump, thump ... thump... thump, thump! so i sat upright decided ok we've got an intruder, and got out of bed. quietly found my pants in the dark and got dressed without making noise. and slipped through the house as quiet as i could as not to scare the would be thief, baseball bat in hand, ready to brain the crook!!! half scared, half angry at the thought of someone breaking in our house while we slept. I peeked around the corner into the dark living room looking for the outline of a would be burglar, and saw nothing but still heard the weirdly timed thump, thump....thump.
while scratching my head in confusion i decided to flip the lights on, and to my surprize my 13 inch red tiger oscar had knocked the top open and was flopping around on the floor.
man i was never so relieved in all my life! so i put the oscar back in the tank and went back to bed.

[SGypsyMermaid]

good one!:D

[thepredexpert]

ive kept tons of huge cichlids and monster predators over the years but the one that takes the cake is the little 1and ahalf inch demosoni ive gotten recently .put him in a 75 gallon with other malawis most 2 to 3 times his size well the next morning i look and what do i see ,electric yellow dead,fuelleborni dead,red top dead, livingstoni dead,small venustus dead and the little mfer was cranking a floating barely breathing bumble bee in the top right corner. i scooped him out and put him in a 38 gallon with a little lelupi that was well established ,not 10 minutes later while im looking to see if there is any recovery possible for the bumble bee out comes the lelupi jumping from the tank and the demosoni now has his own stomping ground . this was 3 weeks ago. now fast forward to today i feed the little guy all fresh veggies i noticed he had polished off the center of a zuccini piece i put in there ,(he eats the center out of that and cucumbers) so i go to reach in there and take it out and it feels like little needle jabs on my hand the little twerp grabed and was pullling at the skin inbetween my fingers lol this fish rocks.

[thepredexpert]

by the way are these little demosonis usually this aggresive?

[Jeto]

from what I've read, yes.
But I've had mine for more than a month and still no injuries whatsoever.....wish me luck.....

[Calvino]

A Bronze Corrie Story


A Month ago i bought 3 corries and kept em with my guppies.
I feed em well, checked on them everyday.

Then 1 of them dissapered no where to be found i checked everywhere the filter gravel.


3 weeks pasted then when i was on the computer playing this game called gunz on line
My mum shouted out CALVIN THERES A SKELTON IN THE TANK!!!

Then i ran and saw half the catfishes body lying on a slate and the other half cut in half 3 times!!!

[Solace]

Man that would have skeert me so bad I woulda had to hug my mommie. :D

[fire mouth man]

okay i was feeding my african butterfly fish.My brother asked my somthing. i turn to my brother,then i felt a little pain in my finger.i looked and my 4 inch butterfly fish had glided across the tank and had inhaled my finger. i pulled him off of my finger and he flew right back into the tank.

[anto81092]

once two of my gouramies were fighting and there was a low attack and one went flying out of the tank and then the other one jumped out of the tank on the ground and fell on top of the other gouramie's body and they kept fight in the ground when i picked on up the other one was hanging to the other's fin!

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(fortunately they both survived)

[Phoenixx]

Well I thought I'd share a miracle story....
On Thursday 10/12 Buffalo, NY was hit hard with an early winter storm. We had over 1 foot of wet snow. For those who dont know, wet snow is very heavy. With that being said, tree branchs along with the whole trees were falling to the ground left and right pulling down powerlines and all. Well around 9:30pm the power for the whole city and surrounding all suburbs go out. No big deal I think, this stuff does happen and usually everything gets back up and running within 1 hour.....Well here it was Sunday, 10/15 when I wake up to no power. My only concern during the power outage is my fish. The basement is 2 inches under water but oh well, what about the fish... Water temp dropped from 81 degrees down to 54 degrees! no filters/powerheads running no heaters. I had my 72g wrapped in 3 blankets, my 125g in the flooded basement wrapped in 2 blankets and a 12'x8' rug. Eventually the power does come on at my house around 2:30pm and I go right to the tank to asses the damage. After 50+ hours of no electricity EVERYONE IS STILL ALIVE! All 6 F. rostratus, 1 D. Compricepps, 1 O. Tangnacea, 1 C. frontosa and 2 L# plecos. They all looked comatossed (spelling?) but are still alive and appear disease free. Took about 4 hours to get both tanks back up to reasonable temp (75 degrees) and I carefully did as large as a water change as I could. My largest male F. rostratus has some fin damage but not enough to worry me, so far so good. I plan to cautiously monitor throughout the rest of the week but I may come out of this with zero casualties. I cant believe how tough these guys are!!

If this happens to anyone else I want to mention that when the power first went out I setup 4 battery powered airpumps (2 per tank) with bubble bars, pulled the biowheels and submerged in container full of aquarium water, and also wrapped the tanks as many blankets as I could find. Once a day for everyday the power was out I put in enough Seachem Prime Tapwater conditioner to remover any ammonia bildup. This may have saved there lives and saved me a lot of heartache.

Oh yeah one last mention, Buffalo, NY was declared a Federal Disaster area and some people in the area are not expected to get power back until next weekend....guess I am very lucky. Count your blessings. Thanks for letting me share my story.

[SGypsyMermaid]

wow, that is a scary story, but thank god it turned out alright--you were prepared for this contingency, and that made all the difference. welcome to the forums!:dance:

[Chromedome]

I forgot about this thread. I do have a story, from many years ago. I had only been keeping fish for a couple of years, I had just set up a 29 gallon tank and moved a 3 inch Oscar into it. Of course, that looked a bit bare, so I was looking for another fish to put with him. I'd seen pictures of very large tanks with fully grown Oscars and Banded Leporinus swimming together, thought they looked really fantastic. But Leporinus were rather expensive in those days, around $4 apiece (1969)! Finally got the money together, went down and bought a 3 inch Leporinus, figuring that he would be large enough and fast enough to co-exist with the Oscar.

I carefully floated the bag, the Oscar came up and looked, poked at the bag once or twice. Finally, I opened the bag and poured the Leporinus into the tank. In the split second it takes for the Leporinus to get his bearings, the Oscar gulped him down, with just the tail sticking out. My jaw hit the floor, and my Dad, who was sitting in his chair across the room, broke out laughing, as he'd been watching me all this time. He was always supportive of my interest, but in retrospect, I imagine I'd have had the same reaction to seeing it happen.

That was probably my first really big mistake. I've made many more since. If it's true that you learn from your mistakes, then I've really learned a lot!

[Glaive]

The more costly the mistake the more you learn. lol

Good story.

[SGypsyMermaid]

i had a leporinus, once...and of course, i bought him without realizing how big he would get.:uh:

[jrrlbds]

my firemouth, PICO, got a rock stuck in his mouth and he was tryin to puke it out, poor thing. IT was sad and hilarious all at the same time. SOOO I had to get the net, scoop him out, and manipulate the rock out of his mouth with tweezers and my fingers. AND he's still alive to this day. AND being a little punk. OH, I got another one.... my congo tetras attack me when i stick my hand into my tank. LOL. they've been hanging around my cichlids too much. LMFAO. I've been geeking out on fish too much lately....LOL. can anyone tell? tehe.

[jrrlbds]

Miss Midas lets me pet her too....and I can hand feed ALL of my fish. YES, i am a nerd. :nana:

[roger3245]

Lets see...I have an aquarium story, and a fishing story.

In my 55 gallon aquarium, I had half of the water intake pipe for my filter off to clean it, and my fish got stuck in it (He is now called Nemo). I was able to easily get him out since the sides were smooth

Wild fish story:
Over the summer, I want to Saint Simons Island, Georgia, to be with relatives. There was a small pier/dock, that a sheet metal roof, which was over an ocean strait. With just pieces of raw shrimp as bait, I caught a few yellowtails, and a stingray the size of a dinnerplate. His stinger was clipped off, and then we threw him back.

[fishyfactoids]

I was once manning the touch tank at my aquarium, and this little girl wanted to see the bay scallop. So I held it up slightly out of the water so she could see it 'squirt'. I figured, this was probably the most harmless animal in the tank. And it BIT ME. Well, closed on my hand. Hard. I think I'm the only person ever bitten by a bivalve.

[Flying Fish 101]

:duel::saw:i got a dempsy and hes like 1 inch and n 2 months he killed a fish and wus like 3inches O_O i wus so F%^#N mad i allmost killed him....THE END:drink::drink::pop::pop:he still is F@$#er LOL:sygypsy::rofl::saw:

my dempsy Jumped OUTA THE WATTER TWICH AND HIT THE WALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:jaw::jaw::jaw::jaw::jump::yik es::ok::ok:

[ozpkchris]

listen to this
i want tho my lfs and bought 3 dozen feeders for a midnight snack

i threw a couple in w/ my 10 in oscar
and of coarse he likes to let them relax before he eats them ..
... soo im watching and what do you kno on of the feeders was a little convict fry.... and then he ate him....... ............
...............no j/k i saved that little guy in a side tank

and after just a few weeks this thing is getting huge

the lfs guy barely has a clue wat a convict is and say he doent take fry so..

it must of been his lucky day

from sure food to a nice home that will feed you
-ozpkchris

[SuddenUrge]

Bumping an old stickied thread but heres a recent one for myself...

Was cleaning the filter intakes on my 55g the other day...kinda forgot to put one back on...went to grab a cold drink and I hear a slurp noise followed by the filter getting really quiet. (AC100 for the curious...) I stop what I'm doing and run over to look at everything....everthing looked fine until i notice the water flow kinda sucks along with the noise...so I unplug the filter and start taking it apart and I find one of my small Electric Yellows in got eaten by the filter in the 2 seconds I turned away =/ needless to say I learned my lesson and turn everything off even after having run them with the 'end cap' off forever when I normally clean them out....
Picture attached for those curious about what what a fish looks like after getting slurped up the tube...


http://www.cichlidforums.com/postimages/2009-01-07/242456-001.jpg