funny story

[semper fi]

my dad's wife's son has a betta. keeps on bragging on how bad it is. we were over there one sunday and he was once again bragging on how bad it is. he snuck it into his wife's goldfish tank and let it kill all of the goldfish. i told him that was a punky thing to do, since his wife likes her goldfish, why i do not know, and it has to be wussy if all it can beat up IS a goldfish. my dad then pipes in with "maggie has a fish that would kick his tail!" so for two months he kept on pestering me to let him bring his betta over to meet my big bad boy. he's never heard of a cichlid before.

forgot to mention my big bad boy is a 12" red devil.

so i told him to bring it over the following weekend and we would put the two together. told him though that if his fish was killed there would be no hard feelings. he told me the same.

the following weekend he brought it over and his wife, my dad and his wife, his brother and his wife and two of his friends. told everyone to bring kleenex for me for when his fish killed mine. really talked this up. but i kept my mouth shut and just told him that maybe he wanted to do this less public. he said no, that he wanted to humiliate me in front of everyone. the only open tank that i had at the time was a 75 gallon breeder tank and the night before i put the RD in it. i asked him when he saw the fish i had if he wanted to change his mind and he said no. mine must be a wuss it was a girls fish. so he acclimated his fish and let it get it's bearings. i have a divider in the tank to seperate the male and female when breeding and when he said he was ready i took it out. his fish was ramming the divider and trying his best to get at my RD. the RD just acted like he did not care. well when the barrier came out his fish charged at mine and got in about three good charges in the side. he started bragging and gloating, saying it was going to be a fast fight. the fourth time he charged at the RD, the RD turned and in one gulp swallowed his fish. swam around the tank with the bettas tail hanging out. i turned to mark to say he was right it was fast and the look on his face was hilarious. he just stood there with his mouth hanging open and a dumbfounded look on his face.

guess i won that argument!

maggie

 

[gadazobe]

I don't think that's funny - it's sick

 

[William]

I agree with Gada on this one, fish fighting is not cool at all

 

[slt]

ah no thats cruel don't agree at all its sick.

 

[StiX]

GRRrrrrr......people like that just get me sooo mad!

 

[cryosi]

Not a very amusing story! must agree

 

[Great Lakes]

Semper Fi, I will agree with you on this one! The Betta was a proven killer, and the owner had a cavalier attitude about it. You saved the lives of countless goldfish.

Not to mention, A red devil is aptly named, about the meanest fish I ever had.

And folks, don't get too mad about this, I am sure Semper is a top notch fishkeeper, she just stumbled into a nest of keepers that don't, as a majority, even use feeders.

I wouldn't advocate fish fighting on a regular basis, but we all have our moments.

 

[cryosi]

well great lakes u got me there i dont have feeder fish, could not name one lol to be honest never looked into them! but i will have a look see, care to name one to start with so i know what i am looking for....

 

[gadazobe]

feeder fish are fish bred to be used as food for live fish eaters - an acquaintance of mine breeds guppies to use as food for his piranhas Horrible but necessary.

 

[cryosi]

oh rite i see, um think i give that a miss lol

 

[Great Lakes]

At the risk of being shunned by many, before I moved and had to temporarily reduce the number of tanks I keep, instead of a hospital, or quarrantine tank, I had a piranah tank. Wife Patti frowned on this at times, but it is one way to manage your fish.

Survival of the fittest. It will surprise you at times though. I had six tiger barbs that terrorized everybody. So off to the piranah tank they went. They ended up killing all three juvenile piranahs!! I was pretty surprised to say the least

 

[Great Lakes]

GRRrrrrr......people like that just get me sooo mad!

Who makes you mad Stickle, Semper, or her friend?

 

[wetwetwet]

The above is not something I'd advocate but GL puts up a good defence for sf

- mitigating circumstances -

 

[semper fi]

well, from everyone's replies i think i should clear some things up.

for one i do not agree with fish fighting. i do not put smaller fish in with my red devil to encourage him to fight. i have tried very hard for the three years i have had him to calm down his aggression. this fish i rescued from someone who used to fight him all the time. he has calmed down and now peaceably lives in a 180 community tank. i have used him to calm down other fish. he usually does fight them and becomes dominant over the fish. he does like to reign supreme in the tank without eating anyone. then the other fish can go back into the rest of the communtiy without getting any other fish unnessarily hurt. i know the Rd can fend for himself.

second, he bugged me for months to let me bring over his betta. i kept blowing him off. it got me mad though when he put his betta in with his wife's goldfish, which were not feeders but fancy fish. his wife is one of the nicest gentlest people you will ever meet. she called me crying on the phone when she came home and found him laughing about it. i even replaced her fish for her. i thought what he did was cruel. if he had not done that to her, i never would of agreed to letting him bring over his betta. i honestly did not expect my RD to eat his betta with one gulp. thought the betta was too large. i thought that the RD might teach it a lesson and his owner. kinda like the same feeling when the neighborhood bully who picks on the smaller kids gets his butt whipped.

i have rescued several fish out of the lfs by my house cause they were sick or abused and nursed them back to health. the new group of fish that i just got , one of the females i requested lost an eye to an overly amorous eye during breeding. she may not be the most desirable one in the group but to me she is. i volunteer at the school where my daughter goes to teach the eighth graders about proper care and maintenance of fish. even spent last summer setting up several tanks at the school which were donated that they wanted to set up. no one knew how to set them up or take care of the fish. have met several kids in the class that get their interest sparked and teach them the other aspects of fishkeeping. have had several of the boys ask about fighting. try to dissuade them and let them learn this is not what fish or any animal for that matter is put on earth for.

i do let my fish eat convict fry that i raise. some of the fry have found little hidey holes and grow out. to me, that is what happens in nature. i try to provide a natural environment for my fish. i have never seen someone at the lakes with a jumbo can of fish food out there every day. the reason i raise their own food is then i know where it came from and am sure that it is disease free. drives me crazy to see someone at a store picking out feeders with 20 of them floating dead in the tank to take home for their fish. or people who feed worms out of their gardens to their fish. they do not know where the worms have been or what they just got through crawling through.

i am sorry if this story offended anyone. also thanks to GL for your support and not jumping to conclusions.

 

[wetwetwet]

SF, as said mitigating circumstances

but these points were not clear from your original post and you can not blame people for jumping to the conclusions they made.