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Deleted member 149562
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Well I just spent the last couple of hours dealing with an unexpected problem with one of my female BN's.......Rosy.
She has got herself into many dodgy situations over the years, mostly due to her sticking her nose where her body didn't fit. I have had to rescue her many times.......today I failed her
The other week I bought some rocks and coconut shells that had living moss on them. I didn't attach the moss, it was ready done, and stupidly I didn't check how the moss was attached or how securely it was attached.
This morning I saw Rosy acting strangely. She was sat beside the rock with the moss, occasionally wriggling about but not moving away from the rock. I increased the intensity of the light and saw that she had somehow managed to pull some of the fine mesh like stuff off the rock (the moss was held onto the rock by mesh that had been glued - this I discovered afterwards). The mesh had wound itself tightly around one of her fins and around her body....every wriggle, it tightened further.
I removed 50% of the water, grabbed the rock in one hand and her in a puddle of water in the other hand (I was wearing gloves as usual) and put them both into a jug and took them into the kitchen. Tried to free her for about 45 minutes but as you can imagine, holding still is not something any fish will do, and especially a BN. I used ultra fine scissors to gently snip away the mesh, no sooner I had done that she wound herself up in more of it. By this time I had freed up and removed the rock from the jug so that I could concentrate on her.
She was getting extremely stressed out, breathing very hard and her body and gill area had quite deep cuts due to the mesh being so tight from her fighting and wriggling. I couldn't get the mesh off her completely, I tried but it was really hard when dealing with black mesh on a dark coloured fish and she was fighting me all the way with everything that she had and she kept rewinding herself up in the mesh.
So I had no alternative but to euthanise her. Her injuries were just too great, she was severely stressed and she was struggling to breathe
I got rid of the rock and the mesh. I checked the rest of the coconut shells and the moss is glued directly onto them, there is no more mesh in the aquarium.
This was one of those freak accidents that could not have been foreseen.
So my dilemma is this...
I now have one female and two male BN's which I am pretty sure will bring out some aggression from the males......do I replace Rosy with another female (not that a juvenile BN shows if its male or female) or do I just see how the three of them get along and maybe remove a male later if necessary?
She has got herself into many dodgy situations over the years, mostly due to her sticking her nose where her body didn't fit. I have had to rescue her many times.......today I failed her
The other week I bought some rocks and coconut shells that had living moss on them. I didn't attach the moss, it was ready done, and stupidly I didn't check how the moss was attached or how securely it was attached.
This morning I saw Rosy acting strangely. She was sat beside the rock with the moss, occasionally wriggling about but not moving away from the rock. I increased the intensity of the light and saw that she had somehow managed to pull some of the fine mesh like stuff off the rock (the moss was held onto the rock by mesh that had been glued - this I discovered afterwards). The mesh had wound itself tightly around one of her fins and around her body....every wriggle, it tightened further.
I removed 50% of the water, grabbed the rock in one hand and her in a puddle of water in the other hand (I was wearing gloves as usual) and put them both into a jug and took them into the kitchen. Tried to free her for about 45 minutes but as you can imagine, holding still is not something any fish will do, and especially a BN. I used ultra fine scissors to gently snip away the mesh, no sooner I had done that she wound herself up in more of it. By this time I had freed up and removed the rock from the jug so that I could concentrate on her.
She was getting extremely stressed out, breathing very hard and her body and gill area had quite deep cuts due to the mesh being so tight from her fighting and wriggling. I couldn't get the mesh off her completely, I tried but it was really hard when dealing with black mesh on a dark coloured fish and she was fighting me all the way with everything that she had and she kept rewinding herself up in the mesh.
So I had no alternative but to euthanise her. Her injuries were just too great, she was severely stressed and she was struggling to breathe
I got rid of the rock and the mesh. I checked the rest of the coconut shells and the moss is glued directly onto them, there is no more mesh in the aquarium.
This was one of those freak accidents that could not have been foreseen.
So my dilemma is this...
I now have one female and two male BN's which I am pretty sure will bring out some aggression from the males......do I replace Rosy with another female (not that a juvenile BN shows if its male or female) or do I just see how the three of them get along and maybe remove a male later if necessary?
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