Funny Stories of Fishes Past

[AnimalKrazed]

So I have only been a member of this forum for about two-ish weeks at the time of this post and I have been browsing to see if there was a thread for funny stories that we forumites have had involving our fish. I was kind of surprised that I couldn't find anything that resembled what I had in mind so I thought I would start the thread for it here.

What I have in mind for this thread is that anyone can post funny or weird stories involving the fish they have kept here. These stories can range from any funny thing a fish did, a the story of how you learned a lesson, something weird that happened in-the-tank/with-your-fish. I know that there are bound to be plenty of these kinds of stories just floating out there. I know that I have more than a few from the years of fishkeeping that I did before the hiatus and I already have a couple from the weeks I have had Buck, my betta.

Example Story:

I am pretty sure that most people of the more enthusiastic hobbyists here on the forums know what it is like to take a community tank that you have had for a few years and turn it into a tank for a more aggressive species. For me, when I did this, I replaced my peaceful 55 gallon community tank of Angels, Dwarf Gouramis, African Dwarf Frogs, Plecostomus, and other such species with African Cichlids.

Now, this story isn't about what my experience with African Cichlids was like or anything like that. To be honest, my experience with African Cichlids was pretty good up to the point in which my family left on vacation for about a week without a housesitter. We came back to a cannibalized tank with only two living fish in it, one the murderer and one who was too fast for it to catch. I blame the LFS guy for that because, as I have since learned, not all African Cichlids can coexist in a tank with one another...the guy had sold me a Demonsi for a mixed African Cichlid tank. frakking stupidity on both my part and the LFS guy in hindsight (but considering I was 12 or 13 at the time and the (twenty something) guy claimed to have his own cichlid tank at home...I am unsure of who to blame more). Anyways, like I said before, this story isn't about that. It is about what I found cleaning up from that.

While I was cleaning the tank, after taking the survivors to the LFS place, I was unearthing everything that was resting in the gravel. I removed plastic plants, a sunken pirate ship, hollow rocks, everything. Well, when I was removing the hollow rocks with plants something fell out from inside and swam for the nearest covering. I'm not ashamed to admit that I freaked out and started hollering. My mom came up and asked what I was fussing about and I told her something had come out from inside one of the plastic plant rocks. Anyways, we took out the rest of the decorations and loe and behold the thing that had apparently been in the tank was an African Dwarf Frog that had somehow managed to evade our grasp when we were readying the tank for the cichlids...and managed 8 months in there with the cichlids themselves. We were baffled and decided to keep him. That little guy survived until I gave up on fishkeeping for high-school which was a while after.

Second Example:

This is a more humourous story example. It is really just about what my Betta has been doing this week. He has been figuring out how to get himself stuck in the tank in the most frustrating ways for me. The first time I could understand, since I was just trying out a 1-3 gallon filter I got for him. Didn't work out, he managed to get himself stuck behind the body of the filter somehow. I immediately removed it, since I was observing how it went to make sure nothing bad happened. He has since also managed to somehow pin himself underneath a plant and tunnel rock, as well as between the thermometer and the wall. Right now, I have removed the tunnel thing to figure out how to prevent that from happening again. Right now, since the tunnel incident happened 5 minutes ago, the spot where I had the tunnel thing placed before putting back in the gravel is showing glass so I am currently seeing Buck just doing a headstand flaring at himself... My fish is so much like my child self it isn't funny. I used to get stuck in my hide and go seek spots all the time and now Buck is doing the same.

Anyways, hope to read a bunch of funny stories soon.

 

[nirbhao]

We had a dwarf gourami and two blue rams together with guppies. The guppies were entirely indifferent to the situation, but the gourami, Silvery, wanted to be in charge and the ram, Trieste, wasn't having it.

Little female ram. I love little female rams. They are so different than males! So Trieste is checking out the substrate in general minding her own business, and Silvery swam up behind her, hit her with his ventral fin, and swam away and hid. Trieste turned and looked at him quickly but then went right back to sipping her iced tea or whatever. This happened several times until she turned around quickly enough and bopped him with her nose.

 

[SherLar]

I didn't find it funny, but my wife laughed till she cried, so I'll post it. I have one cichlid, an Acei female, who often gets so excited at feeding time that she jumps out of the tank when I raise the lid to feed. Usually, I catch her in midair and quickly put her back, and she seems no worse for wear. A few weeks ago, I was getting ready to feed, and showing friends the tanks at the same time, as were in the midst of a dinner party. Since we were enjoying an after-dinner treat (18 yr old, single malt), I had my glass in my hand. This time, when she jumped out, I fumbled the catch and somehow managed to drop her right into my scotch, head first. I quickly got her back into the tank, again with no noticeable adverse affects (aside from swimming a bit lopsided for a while perhaps), and quickly learned that fish is not a complimentary flavor with scotch. Who knew . . .

 

[extremebunny]

never had funny stories about fish, really only problems with guppies. I had 3 in a tank and while I was moving one of them he fell on the floor and rolled under the closet. I got him back in the tank and a few weeks later he ate the other two alive.

 

[Delapool]

Yoyo loaches - only fish I know that can sleep on its side, yawn twice while you are watching (just in case this one time they really are dead), roll over and back to sleep...

 

[AnimalKrazed]

This story isn't so much about my experience with fish as it is my brother's. He doesn't keep pets anymore, partially out of lack of interest and partially out of other reasons I am don't know about, but he used to have two young oscars. They were almost the size of a man's palm when he rehomed them cause they were getting to be too big for any of the aquariums we had, I feel like I have to explain what happened to them for some reason, but before that point they were pretty comfy in a well-filtered 35-40 gallon in his room.

Anyways, when he had them he felt like he wanted to get something to help keep the bottom clean so he got himself a crayfish. It lived in a little cave he made out of some slate stone he bought and was pleasant enough. Come summer, and my family leaves for a week to visit family in Chicago. A house sitter took care of everything, I think...I can't remember much because it was so long ago. While we were in Chicago we visited the Shedd aquarium, great place, and noticed they had some Oscar's in the Amazon exhibit they had. We read the panel they had on Oscar's and noticed that listed as a natural prey item for them was...you guessed it. Crayfish. We worried, as is natural, but figured that the crayfish would be fine till we got home and could move it. When we did get home, all I can recall is that they were exoskeleton bits floating across the floor of the tank and two chubby Oscar's swimming happy as can be. It was traumatic at the time, but it is funny to remember now that is at least a decade in the past.

 

[TMaier]

Fresh mini lobster dinner. Yummy

 

[Autumnsky]

My funny storry is a tad sad but fun in the end.

Daughter had a new Fluval Edge tank she bought for $13. Older halogen version and was lost in the store until the discount had gone down that far! We saw it and the price was crazy cheap.

She had a few little Bronze Cories, they were babies and were going to go into my tank when they got bigger, and later found some sad ill feeder fish she wanted to save, yes 3 tiny feeder GF I am talking about. But since I had a pond, she figured she could get them healthy and put them into the pond.

Everyone here can probably guess how that went, sick feeder fish died within a few days and week, even with very frequent pwc, and then she was disheartened, and asked if we could just close down the tank.

We caught the couple Cories that remained, it seemed one had died, I combed through the sand and took out all decos to make sure we hadn't missed him. Even did it again a couple days later, just to make sure I didn't miss it. Nothing. So it sat in her room for a couple months, maybe 3.

I had a big load of baby fish either being born or coming and asked if I could borrow it for the babies and she said yes.

The tank had been unplugged, so no heat, and no air bubbler, and no food for all that time, with a few inches of water in it. I go to remove the decor and start the clean up process and something zips by my hand and scares the heck out of me!!!!!

All I could think was that some odd creature had made it's way into the house to take up residence in a murky little forgotten tank of water... I was a wee bit nervous to dig around to find out what it was. Brief thought that we have Salamanders around and maybe somehow one had smelled the water and got in the house. Took the glass out into the light and could then see!

Well lo and behold the little Cory somehow found somewhere to hide that day we shut it down, at least 2 times searching that day and then again the other attempt to find it. I searched very well in there too! It escaped notice, on the desk all that time!

It looked a little thinner than usual, but got it into the tank with its other 2 Bronze Cory friends and it was never so happy. I think it even grew into the larger of the the group and lived a few years after that.