deli_conker
Aquarium Advice Addict
I think I have found a new definition of fish stress; it's the stress that your fish cause you when you have to do something for their own good and they don't feel cooperative...
The Background...
I have a 55 gal ARLC tank (the inhabitants are listed in my signature). The 2 socolofi started to take over the tank. Chasing all the others away, trying to hog all the food, pinning three quarters of the population into one third of the tank. Eventually I saw some fin nipping as well. At first I thought they they might be a mating pair, but from everything I know about fish sexing, they both look male and they haven't been courting either. Some of the other fish were showing signs of stress from the socolofi's behavior. Last night I decided that it was time for them to go.
The Story...
I'm a novice in netting. Trying to net a very fast and unwilling subject in a rocky tank is still outside of my abilities right now. At first I played the patience game. I put the net on the side of the tank where the soco's claimed and started to feed them like I normally do at that time. Normally all the fish show up in a frenzy. This time would start to approach the food, see the net or otherwise sense something was wrong and back off. Suddenly they were bottom feeders as the flakes started to sink. Luckily, I didn't feed them as much as I normally do.
For my next trick I put some "emerald entree" (algae, brine shrimp, krill, etc) into my net hoping they would smell it and come close enough for me to scoop up. Again they would approach and then run away.
After that failure, I tried the "turn off the lights, wait a few minutes for them to chill out and then hunt them with a flashlight. My girlfriend is on the other side of my tank with the flashlight and I am going after them with the net. I couldn't help but hum the theme song to "Cops" (bad boys, bad boys, what ya gonna do) while trying to catch them.
Eventually I said f it. Took the hood off of the one side and pulled out all the terrain on that side and basically tried to flush them out from one side of the tank into the empty one using a net and a clear square container. After removing a little more terrain I finally caught one in the net. I sentence you to the 10 gal QT tank. Now for his accomplice.
This ended up in me having to remove terrain from the other side of the tank as at this point he was trying to run with the flock instead of being the neighborhood bully.
At some point, my girlfriend says "Where's the orange one?" I say "What do mean, where's the orange one?" A head count followed. The orange one was missing and there was no place to hide in the tank. I'm looking at all the terrain sitting out on trash bags on the floor and I start with the driftwood. I pick it up, glance at a known hiding place and put it back into the tank. Then I go to the next piece. There are only three total pieces that he could have been in; the rest being rock that just sits on other rock. Two of the pieces are resin cave works. The only problem I have with them is that they have a hole in them that grants access to the infrastructure of the terrain. The other two pieces go into the tank. I'm crapping my pants at this point. We wait about a minute. Nothing. I pick up the wood a bit and give a little shake. Nothing. I move onto one of the resin pieces and do the same. Out swims my red zebra. That lucky sob was outside of my tank for at least 5 minutes, probably more. He had to have been in a little pool of water still in the terrain. That's the only explanation I can see. His gills were a little darker than normal. But he was swimming around fine.
Finally, I cath the other soco and put him into the qt tank. I put most of the terrain into the tank. I rearranged most of it to balance it out more than it was before. I also kept most of my plants out.
The socolofi weren't too happy about thier situation, but I'm taking them to the lfs after work today. They'll get over it.
All said, this little adventure took about an hour and a half to complete. I was so spent by the time it was over.
Today...
Everybody seems to be doing fine. The red zebra was chillin in his little internal resin terrain cave (which I want to close off so his fat butt doesn't get stuck in someday). The socolofi were even doing well in the qt tank. Nobody frenzied for food when I fed them a little this morning, but I kind of expected that. I'm sure they will scrounge all day like they normally do. My girlfriend is home today. She will be keeping an eye on them and call me if anything happens. Ugh.
The Background...
I have a 55 gal ARLC tank (the inhabitants are listed in my signature). The 2 socolofi started to take over the tank. Chasing all the others away, trying to hog all the food, pinning three quarters of the population into one third of the tank. Eventually I saw some fin nipping as well. At first I thought they they might be a mating pair, but from everything I know about fish sexing, they both look male and they haven't been courting either. Some of the other fish were showing signs of stress from the socolofi's behavior. Last night I decided that it was time for them to go.
The Story...
I'm a novice in netting. Trying to net a very fast and unwilling subject in a rocky tank is still outside of my abilities right now. At first I played the patience game. I put the net on the side of the tank where the soco's claimed and started to feed them like I normally do at that time. Normally all the fish show up in a frenzy. This time would start to approach the food, see the net or otherwise sense something was wrong and back off. Suddenly they were bottom feeders as the flakes started to sink. Luckily, I didn't feed them as much as I normally do.
For my next trick I put some "emerald entree" (algae, brine shrimp, krill, etc) into my net hoping they would smell it and come close enough for me to scoop up. Again they would approach and then run away.
After that failure, I tried the "turn off the lights, wait a few minutes for them to chill out and then hunt them with a flashlight. My girlfriend is on the other side of my tank with the flashlight and I am going after them with the net. I couldn't help but hum the theme song to "Cops" (bad boys, bad boys, what ya gonna do) while trying to catch them.
Eventually I said f it. Took the hood off of the one side and pulled out all the terrain on that side and basically tried to flush them out from one side of the tank into the empty one using a net and a clear square container. After removing a little more terrain I finally caught one in the net. I sentence you to the 10 gal QT tank. Now for his accomplice.
This ended up in me having to remove terrain from the other side of the tank as at this point he was trying to run with the flock instead of being the neighborhood bully.
At some point, my girlfriend says "Where's the orange one?" I say "What do mean, where's the orange one?" A head count followed. The orange one was missing and there was no place to hide in the tank. I'm looking at all the terrain sitting out on trash bags on the floor and I start with the driftwood. I pick it up, glance at a known hiding place and put it back into the tank. Then I go to the next piece. There are only three total pieces that he could have been in; the rest being rock that just sits on other rock. Two of the pieces are resin cave works. The only problem I have with them is that they have a hole in them that grants access to the infrastructure of the terrain. The other two pieces go into the tank. I'm crapping my pants at this point. We wait about a minute. Nothing. I pick up the wood a bit and give a little shake. Nothing. I move onto one of the resin pieces and do the same. Out swims my red zebra. That lucky sob was outside of my tank for at least 5 minutes, probably more. He had to have been in a little pool of water still in the terrain. That's the only explanation I can see. His gills were a little darker than normal. But he was swimming around fine.
Finally, I cath the other soco and put him into the qt tank. I put most of the terrain into the tank. I rearranged most of it to balance it out more than it was before. I also kept most of my plants out.
The socolofi weren't too happy about thier situation, but I'm taking them to the lfs after work today. They'll get over it.
All said, this little adventure took about an hour and a half to complete. I was so spent by the time it was over.
Today...
Everybody seems to be doing fine. The red zebra was chillin in his little internal resin terrain cave (which I want to close off so his fat butt doesn't get stuck in someday). The socolofi were even doing well in the qt tank. Nobody frenzied for food when I fed them a little this morning, but I kind of expected that. I'm sure they will scrounge all day like they normally do. My girlfriend is home today. She will be keeping an eye on them and call me if anything happens. Ugh.
