Your Worst Fish Story.

[SherriSixxx]

Am sooo nervous...Hope it won't be today. I put the heater on for my pleco last nite, and the thermostate in it had broken...this morning the water was really hot, and pleco extremely stressed....noooo. Didn't know whether to change most of the water really quickly to colder water, or just let the water cool down naturally....I chose the latter, as was worried pleco would be put under too much stress with water change and sudden temperature change....Will find out today after work how Mr Pleco is doing...please keep your fingers crossed.....

 

[Griz]

Cats and fish really don't mix!

This happened to me about 15 years ago and may serve as a warning to others.

I had a Jack Dempsey which was about 6" and a beautiful fish. Tons of perersonality too. My cat, Shadow used to enjoy watching him and I think that "Jack" enjoyed the cat's company too. Well, I came home from work one day to find Jack lying at the surface, near dead. I soon realized that the temperature in the tank was in the nineties! I concluded the cat had managed to turn the heater up, she was constantly rubbing her nose on things. I slowly cooled him down but to no avail.

Shadow has since passed on, but I always secured the heater control with a piece of electrical tape while she was still around.

 

[Bre_B]

I have two.

First one: in our first tank, we had somehow acquired a mystery fish. I dont know what it was, and honestly it was so long ago i really dont see a reason to try and figure out what it was, but it looked like a female guppy, just a SLIGHT bit larger, and it was a solid olive-yellowy kinda color. Like a dull greyish yellow.

Anyway, we named it Odie, because it was small, kinda dumb (hard to explain. just trust me, it wasnt the brightest.) And we never hada real cover in our tank. We never really had any problems, either, though, so it was okay.

well, one day odie disappeared. About 3 years later, when we decided taht we wanted our christmas tree to be where the fishtank was, we moved the fishtank (which was kiddie cornered) and found a dried up odie plastered to the floor.




second one: My cousin and me had a saltwater tank together. It was a bigger tank, i never knew the size (i was younger and really didnt care haha that was my cousins forte at the time =P i just liked the fish's colors) but anyway, our brothers (my brother and her brother) decided that since it had to be moved, theyd do it without taking out all the water. They took out half of it - and it was a bigger tank - and tried to be macho guys about it.

well, the macho guys cost a lot of money and had to pay my cousin (and me, technically) the money to replace the tank which cracked, water and the stuff to put in it, new fish since ALL of them died, and he had to pay our grandmother who owned the house where it was kept for the damage all the water did when it seeped through the top floor straight through the main floor and into the basement.

heh. "macho" guys. heheheh.

 

[SherriSixxx]

Further to my story above, am glad to report all is ok, and I didn't boil my pleco alive,huh. He is ok and eating. Sure learned a lesson,tho.

Some of the stories on this thread are soo sad, but hopefully will help others not to make same mistakes. Very useful thread!!

 

[bettaBetta]

I have a few

#1; When I was little I got a 5G aquarium and I filled it with water which I figured should be luke warm. I put in a skull heal cave, and got some rocks outside and washed them off and put them in and a couple of rocks from a tank I had wild frogs in and some horridly ugly neon green gravel. Well, it was (or so I though) ready for fish. I went out to the grocery store fish section and bought a couple of gold fish and plopped them in there and a couple days later a friend brought me a guppy and a black molly for my birthday so I dropped them in there too. OVer the next few months I only cleaned the tank when it looked real cloudy and stunk and then I (w/ my mom's help) would do 100% water change and scrub the gravel(we may have even used soap and they were fed like three times a day as much as they wanted. Surprisingly they lived for awhile, eventually my pull comet GF started eating the guppy's tail until it died, next my black molly gave birth and three survived for three days and then mother and fry died from fungus. The next to got was the smaller (walkins?) goldfish which died of swim bladder. The last goldfish got very big, but was content for some time, he even jumped out of his tank one night and was drying on the floor bt was plopped back in the tank and lived with not extra care and no problem. That fish lived to be 3 years old! How I'll never know.

#2 Awhile after I got him, my first betta, Poseidon, I did a water change and put him is a fish bowl temporarily with a cd so he wouldn't jump out and set him on the table my (then) 4 cats were NOT allowed on. Unfortunately one of my cats forgot that rule and shreded his tail (luckily not his body) but he was fine afte rthat and even seemed to enjoy now being able to move easily.

#3 My ct betta from Wal-mart had fungus and recently I had just got rid of it and they were doing great, but I accidently dropped one (I use my hands instead of nets), just for a momment clened him in a bowl of tankwater and put him back in the tank with stress coat, but it re-introduced soem fungus to the tank.

 

[Durbkat]

About 1 and a half years ago I had my common pleco in my 10g with 3 black tetras and a blue groumie (or however you spell it) and the tank was going through a bacteria bloom and the black tetras were staying towards the bottom alot So I took the pleco out into a holding tank that hung on the inside of the tank and I had an airstone in it and one morning my mom said she heard some of the plastic bags I had under the tank stand rustling around and she thought it was a mouse so I got my bat and went over to the tank and didn't see the pleco so I thought he had gotten in the tank so I looked in there and he wasn't there then I heard the rustling again so I started pulling stuff out from under the tank and found him and put him back in the holding tank and he had dirt and dry skin all over him but he pulled through and is still alive. Then recently since he is in the long 20g he kept trying to get in the output of the filter but thought he would never do it because the current was to strong. But he did it not once but twice and got stuck each time and I had to go get him unstuck. But he is still alive and has stopped doing it.

 

[Soaup]

I lost 13 africans after the beat on my pleco who in turn got sick and then they got sick only about 5 survived. That was a pretty bad hit within those 10 one i had for 5 years that was hard. I think the worst for me is coming home and finding a fish on the floor dried up and long gone. I dont know how they manage out of the tank but when they do i think its horrible. I would hate to die from suffication