Tell me your best fish (tank or coral) story

[inwall75]

We all know about the one that got away from the oldies but goldies but what I want to know is about what's happening with your fish tanks. Your proudest accomplishments. Your biggest defeat? How you overcame it? Any amusing lil stories you'd like to share!!! I'll begin with the one about the 10 inch lion fish that jumped out of the pet store display when I worked there at my husband to be!!! you've never seen people ducking so fast!!! And who had to get the fish back in the tank but MEEEE!

[Naty]

come on surely you all have at least ONE story.

BUMP

[FishyinKY]

Come on MAc get usstarted and tell us one of yours.
Don

[Michelle]

Hubby and I were in a LFS in Houston one day and I swear I saw a Hawk Fish jumping between tanks to eat the smaller fish. :)

[Naty]

Well, I have to say the way my copperband got it's start in life is a good story. My LFS was having it's annual December sale and I had just setup my 180g ecosystem. The owner and I had decided to put a copperband in and he so ordered me one. He ended up getting 3. But now the story gets good depending on how you look at it. The entire fish shipment went to Dallas instead of Houston. The airlines would not take the LFS owners wifes word that this shipment was meant for Houston and being that west coast time was to be considered, this shipment of fish sat on a Dallas tarmack for almost a half day. They fish went out on a thursday and ended up finally getting to Houston on friday night.

My copperband was the size of a quarter. It was the wrong size but it has now been with me for 2.5 years. It is a mysis eating machine just don't try to make it eat aiptasia.

[Wildcatt88]

GREAT STORY SUE! Come on people share.

Mac

[Michelle]

I had a yellow tang that used to amuse itself by following one of my hermit crabs (black and white vertical stripes on it's leg, don't know what kind it is) around. If the hermit crab attempted to go onto one particular rock (the rock is kinda sitting near the front of the tank away from the main wall) then tang used to knock the crab around until it went elsewhere. Any other hermit crab (blue and red legged ones) could go on the rock without any problems!

Michelle

[Naty]

Great stories so far!
Mine has to be the day we caught the Mantis in our tank. After watching the tank for 3 months and 4 fish that were lost, it was like winning the lotto! Trying to find it, I used flashlights with red lens, crawled into the room to sneak up on it, sat in the dark waiting and staring at the tank with just the moon light on, set traps etc. I came home from work one day and always check the tank when I let the dog out. There in front of me was that lil stinker Mantis playing peek-a-boo behind my leather coral. We had devised a plan if we ever seen it, so I grabbed the turkey baster and hubby got a bucket with some fresh water in it. I grabbed a net and he reached in and lifted the rock the leather was on. I swooped the net in and pulled the small rock out. Hubby lifted the rock from the net and I shot FW into the hole on the rock. The Mantis shot out of the rock and fell into the bucket below. We didn't destroy it and placed it in another tank we had.

[FishyinKY]

You know I have so many stories (which makes me think i've been doing this way to long) but maybe one of the most interesting might be the hatching of the shark. Begins with buying the shark egg. placed it in the tank. Checked it periodically to make sure it was still alive and swimming in the egg. One day the egg started bouncing ALL over the place. The next day same thing. Then one day it just stopped. Well I got worried. There was an egg filled with shark and it stopped moving. So after much worry I decided to cut the thing open. I got the sharpest knife I could find and dragged Scott off the couch and said "do this please". He kept saying well its dead, its stopped moving so its dead. But we should do this so we get it out before it rots and poisons the tank. Welllllll, we cut the side under water making sure that the shark if alive was still safe in the water. Opened it up and it just laid there. No signs of breathing. We lifted it out of the water heading to the trashcan and all the sudden the shark comes to life. Thrashing around and biting at everything. Plop he went into the water. What did I learn? Don't ever give up on something unless you are Positive its gone.

Mac

[PorkChop]

These are great stories, I figured I would add mine to the list. Sorry it is kind of long. My son, at one time, had a fifty gallon predator tank. It started out as a hold over tank for frags I picked up at reef meetings and such. I had a couple of three stripe damsels in it. He bought a dwarf Lionfish ( a very small one) I didn't think that it would be able to eat the damsels because the it was so small. Both damsels disappeared within 48 hrs. I continued to house frags in the tank til I was able to take them to my tank at work for about a year. I wasn't watching one day and the lionfish finned me. I spend three days in the hospital, but that is another story. Anyway, Easter time came and my son was showing some guests how he hand fed his lionfish silversides. The next day, we found the lionfish dead in his tank and some remains of hamburgermeat. That summer I build my new tank and decided to break down the 50 gallon tank and use it as a refugium. November, I started up the new system. And I broke down the fifty and moved the rock, sand, and water to buckets. I left the rock in a bucket with saltwater and a pump and heater going for a couple of days, as I didn't want too much die off. I had put a 4" sand bed into the tank and had a sand storm going on. The next day I placed the rocks and water from the bucket into the tank. As I am looking at the tank to check for leaks, I see a black and white thing shoot past the front of the tank. It was one of the damsels. It was alive. We hadn't seen this fish in over a year. I caught it up in a net and placed it into my 90 gallon til the new tank was ready to house creatures. Still have the damsel, and he doesn't hide out in the rock anymore. And he is happy finally in the 255 gallon.

Tracey

[supahtim]

^bump

[minh_han]

^bump

[McSierra]

^bump

[minh_han]

A few months ago I got a couple clams from a fellow reefer. Well unfortunatly he also had flatworms so I decided I needed to scrub those things off. I had the large clam in a bowl of water scrubbing away and the little clam in it's own bowl waiting it's turn when all of a sudden this stream of water shoots out of the little bowl and gets me and my friend wet. I didn't take into account that clams will blow water through their siphons. Needless to say the hubby had a good laugh at us and kept asking why we jumped and were scared.

[Naty]

Great story Leslea! Come on people surely you have some more!
Mac

[Naty]

Ok... this one kinda belongs here.

I just went into the living room to take a look at my 5 gallon reef. To my horror the strange reflection of one of my 13 watt PC lights inside my tank actually happened to be ONE OF MY 13 WATT PCs IN THE TANK!!!! ARGH!!! It was fully lit as well as fully submerged.

Bugs and critters in the tank look ok and alive. The only things that look out of order some ricordia polyps whose tentacles now look narrow instead of spherical. This may be nothing but I'll keep an eye out.

The problem is that I have my PC clips screwed directly into a piece of mirrored acrylic. The bulb heated the screw, and the screw in turn melted the acrylic enough to break free. Anyways, it looks like I got lucky this time. Whew... just needed to share. :(

-Rogue

[Wildcatt88]

That was mighty lucky!!! Glad it wasn't a tragic story Rogue!

[Wildcatt88]

OH yeah that fit. Dang that could have been such a tragedy but i'm so glad it wasn't

Mac

[Katspaw]

Well working in the LFS for 7 years I have heard just about everything you can think off. The best one still is:
One day I get a call from an elderly lady asking is fish can be magnetized. OK I think she is nuts. I tell her not unless someone is feeding them metal bee bees. LOL She continues to tell me that her yellow tang is magnetic. “Every time he goes near the cleaning magnet he is drawn towards it so I think he is magnetic.” I try to explain that he is probably just checking it out or wanting to eat the algae off it.
She wouldn’t believe me.
True story
sharks

[Wildcatt88]

Ok heres one for ya. This happened along time ago when all you could get was FO. I had a 300 gal, tank way overfilled with fish, in thier i had a adult queen angel (real nice fish). Well I go to the LFS and impulse buy a mantis lobster (yes lobster). well the thing goes to the middle of the tank and sits on its tail looking up. Well for 3 days it just sits thier, finally while I am watching, it springs off its tail and take a 2 inch slice out of my prise angel, the angel freaks and eventually falls to the bottom of the tank, where Mr. lobster begins to dismantle it. Well I am smoking and looking for a gun, hehe.I run and get a chair and a barbique skere, I am going in after it. Well after about a 1/2 hour I have it cornered in a corner, but its not going with out a fight, it does short charges at my skere, I make a plunge at it and miss completely, the plunge causes me to loose my balance and I go in head first up to my belly button. I pull myself out and look and no lobster, just then the door bell rings for my hot date. I quickly grab a towel on the way to the door and try to do my best "no nothing just happened look". Well I open the door and its her, and the first thing she does is cover her mouth and say what happened are u ok. Well I say oh ya nothing happened way. So looks at me weird and says well you soaking wet, your face is covered in blood (must have hit one of the Bleached corals on the way in) and you have something hanging on the side of your head (yes of coarse the lobster clamped onto my hair). Moral of the story? the lobster always wins


Mike

[Wildcatt88]

LOLOL... that's a great one!!! That should be a scene in a movie or something. Umm... but what's a Mantis Lobster, and where can I get one? :)

-Rogue

[Wildcatt88]

oh my ....still laughing...mike thats too funny....it really should be in a movie....

[Sea of Sorrow]

My friend that worked at the LFS said a woman was in there one day wanted to return her deepwater air pump because it didn't work and kept shorting out the breaker. After a long session of trying to find out what was wrong with the pump and the customer kept complaining it was a deep water pump and it should work in deepwater it was found out that she was submerging the pump in the tank and turning it on. Duh! No wonder the breakers kept flipping.

[FishnFreak]

OK, I have a short one.
I'm at the LFS last weekend and they have a nano set up with seahorses in it. So I'm checking out the seahorses and this young lady who works there comes over and is going to show me how to feed them and how they eat. (This could be a whole separate story, seahorse feeding is like watching paint dry - if the food doesn't bounce off thier nose they will miss it!) So she spreads some food in the tank and one of the horses is SLOOOOWLY moving toward it when a hermit crab latches on to him! Down they go to the bottom of the tank in this life and death struggle! (those of you who hate hermits are enjoying this!) I point and say, check that out. OMG! She goes into a panic to save this horsie and knocks over a bunch of stuff trying to get that crab. Finally the horse frees himself and the audience that has gathered cheers. Not a great story, but a bit amusing.

[GumHead]

I have had my tank up and running for approx. 1 year. 75 gal., 100 lbs. LR, various coral, 440 flourecent, (1) 175 watt 10k. Long story short. I have never purchaced Mantis Shrimp, but today my wife and I saw two of them in the tank. They are about 2 inches long and about 3/8 inches in diameter. Freaked me out!!! Anyone ever heard of such?

[Naty]

Sorry folks, this one isn't mine. I chose not to give the link but to copy and paste to protect this poor guys name. The posters initials on this usenet post are R.B. Some of you have probably run across this a time or two. From what I understand, this was NOT a joke post but actually had posts that followed to help R.B.

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1992
Newsgroup: rec.aquaria,alt.aquaria
Hi, netter's -

I've got a question I'd like to pose to the collective wisdom of the net,
but first let me give you some background on my tank.

I have kept freshwater tanks for a number of years, and decided to try my
hand at a marine system. The only aquarium I had available at the time was
an extra 10 gallon all glass stashed away in the basement somewhere. I took
off looking for it, prepared to find it covered with dust and spiders, but
man, I was pleasantly surprised to find out otherwise. I seems that my
wife had put it to good use these past several years. I guess she had been
having a problem with leaking bottles of laundry detergent and other cleaning
supplies and so she just placed them in the aquarium to keep the stuff from
running every where. The excess seemed to just run under the UGF plates and
keep the bottles relatively tidy. Obviously, cleaning up this tank was
going to be a snap! I tossed out all those bottles, (the seemed fairly
empty by then) and got to work. My first problem was removing those filter
plates. It didn't look as if they were wedged in there very tightly, but I
certainly could't pry them loose! I thought that bleach or battery acid or
a good soaking with WD-40 would free it up, but they wouldn't budge, so I
guess they were supposed to fit that way. I cleaned up the thing as best as
I could, and also scraped away most of that grey-green tar-like stuff, and
started planning the rest of the system.
Now I knew that UGF's were not the filter of choice in marine systems, but
hey! It was there so I used it! There was that part of me that wanted to
`do it right', though, and so I built myself a trickle filter. It's really
easy to do, and I would recommend it to any one. My first attempt used a
40 quart kitchen garbage pail as the tower. I filled this with chopped up
IC tubes for the bio-media. I was a little worried about the printing on the
side of the tubes saying they were anti-static coated, so I soaked the first
batch in acetone, to remove the coating. The less said about that, the better.
I finally resorted to soaking the pieces in hot water, until the water doesn't
turn quite so grey. I did try frappe-ing one bunch in the blender, but the
smell wasn't very nice and it took me almost an hour to get enough plastic
out from around the blades so that the motor would run again. Anyway, I piled
all those pieces of chip tubes into the garbage pail, and filled it up. I got
a used pump from an industrial surplus house (only $15.00!!!) and hooked
it up as my water return, after scraping most of that yellow stuff off of it.
Now I know Thiel says to pump lot's of air into the trickle tower, but That
Fish Place wanted over $75.00 for the Whisper 1000 Thiel suggested. Not
while there's that old air conditioning blower from my '72 Chevelle out in
the garage. I just got some drier vent hose and cut a hole in the side of
my garbage pail, and hooked the two up. I decided to test run this setup a
little, and when I fired up the air blower, I blew darn near every single
chunk of media plastic clear out of the tower! I knew then that I needed a
drip tray over the top of the tower. I fashioned one out of tupperware and
an old piece of plexiglass I had lying around, and fixed it firmly on top of
the tower. Pouring water in the top assured me that the drip tray was working
out pretty well, so I turned on the fan again. The most interesting thing
about that was, the water that didn't actually fly out and onto the walls and
ceiling seemed to be little droplets suspended about 8 inches over the drip
tray and moving from one air stream to another. Fascinating, but not what I
was actually looking for.
Once again, I hauled out the shop-vac to clean up, and suddenly it hit me!
I knew the perfect way to make a wet-dry filter! I would use this great
old shop-vac! It's made for wet or dry! It has the capacity I need!
So I fitted the shop-vac OVER THE TOP of the display tank. That's the key!
I suck the water out of the tank, into the vac, over the media, with plenty of
air, and I drilled out a return hole in the bottom to drain the vac back into
the aquarium. Perfect!
Of course, I probably should have cleaned out the shop-vac little better
before actually trying out the system, but it turned out OK. It is kinda
surprising how small a wet dust bunny is. One drawback, however. I had to
remove the telephone from the room, 'cause somehow the new filter affected
it's operation. It seemed like no one could hear me, and I know I could
hardly hear the callers. Moving the phone to the basement cleared it right up.
I decided to have a protein skimmer on my system 'cause by now I had been
reading the .aquaria newsgroups long enough to figure out that those reef
aquarium keepers seem to be having all the excitement, and they all rave
about skimmers. Besides, there seemed to a fair amount of foam being generated
in the new "shop-vac power trickle" filter. I had some GREAT ideas on how to
build one myself, from scratch, but my wife absolutely insisted on buying me
one for my birthday. Watta gal!
Needless to say, I got a nice, big, free standing, powerhead driven, counter-
current, venturi style protein skimmer with ozone! Arr Arr Arr ooh ooh
ooohhhyesss! Sorry, about that, a little Tim Allen lingo crept in there!
I fired that bad boy p. skimmer up, and dang if it didn't suck half of the water
out of the tank! The foam was just a-churnin' out! I topped off the tank
water, and just sat back to admire the system for a minute. I did wonder at
the quantity of the foam, considering that I hadn't yet put any animals in
the tank yet, but I supposed that dissolved organics might not be all that
it may be good at removing.
Now I needed a light for the system, but this was even easier than the tricle
filter. Natural sunlight! What could be better? I just replaced the panes
of glass in the south window with low refectivity, high transmission glass,
and bingo! Bright, correctly color balanced, natural light! One of the
advantagious fringe benefits of being a ham radio operator is the fact that
there is an antenna tower just outside the window, I was able to mount a pair
of big reflecting mirrors on the tower to shine full strength into the tank.
Of course, here in Minnesota, the days get kinda short in winter, so I picked
up a pair of 500W Halogen bulbs, and an old carbon arc projector bulb to
supplement. I placed them in concentrating reflectors I made by pounding out
some old hub caps (Chevelle again!). Man, when I turn those babies on at
night, motorists on my street can turn their headlights off!
Since adding the lights, I haven't really seen the need for a heater, and it
seems to take the better part of the night for the temperature to come back
down anyway.
Soooo let's see, I've covered the tank, the filters, lights, heat... What's
left? Oh yeah, the water. There is a fairly inexpensive product commonly
referred to as 'Ice Bite' and this is mostly Calcium Chloride. I figured
that using this stuff and some off the shelf table salt, I could get by, no
problem. However, after considering more carefully, I figured that you just
can't be too carefull about what you put in your tank, so I just used tap
water and Reef Crystals.
I ordered a case of live rock, which I thought would be great way to set up
the tank, and so I just plopped that stuff in there, turned on all the
equipment, and set off to the fish store for some critters to stock this
thing with.
I wanted a real nice assortment, and ended up coming home with:
1 pair of Neon Gobies
1 Cleaner Wrasse
2 Copper-Banded Butterfly fish
1 Percula Clown Anemonefish
1 Pink Tipped Anemone (Candylactis?? (sp))
1 Angelfish whose exact type escapes me for the moment
1 Brain Coral
1 Leather Coral
and finally,
1 of those really nifty little Peppermint Shrimp things
Wow, did that all look great! I needed to rearrange some of the rocks a
little to allow all the fish to get completely in the water, but that was
really no problem at all.
I set the lights on a timer I picked up on the way home from the pet shop,
after getting the groceries, I guess it was, and left the fish to get used
to their new home.
I was late for work the next morning, so I don't know what the situation was
in the morning, but when I got home that night, I was shocked. The corals
and the butterfly fishes had both spawned! No, only kidding. Sadly, the whole
mess seemed pretty dead, and was well on it's way to smelling strongly, too.

My question is : What did I do wrong?

;^) ;^) ;^) ;^) ;^) ;^) ;^) ;^) ;^) ;^) ;^) ;^)

Flames, complaints and whining >> /dev/null

[Naty]

OK---Here's one of mine.

I had some friends coming over and they had never seen my tank but they heard me talking about it for 2 months. They were coming over around noon and I knew the first thing they would want to see would be my tank. As a result, I was cleaning the glass, making sure there was no algae, etc. About 45 minutes before they arrived while I was doing my cleaning, I somehow killed my VHO actinics. This was when I was using 6500k MH's instead of 10k's.

No matter what I did, I couldn't get the actinics on. I was still struggling trying to get them fixed when they arrived.

Yep, they wanted to see my tank within 60 seconds of being in my house. Without the actinics, my tank which now only has 6500k lighting, looked yellower than a yellow tang. I doubt they were impressed.

[ricordia]

Hey Curt, that first one HAD to be a joke, just HAD to...

And I'm sure your friends WERE impressed, even if it was only by how addicted reef people get ("You paid HOW much for ROCKS? And had them flown here from WHERE?!?" I get this one a lot...). ;)

[J_T]

Dawn,
I feel the same way, it just had to be a joke. However, from what I understand people were posting helpful info and R.B. was asking questions. Obviously, it is possible that R.B. was pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, you never know.

Yeah, you're right. Most people don't understand---It's a reefer thing.

[brekurboy1]

Oh man Curt...

I really didn't enjoy reading through that long post just to see that it was a joke. >:

I heard a story this week that is yet unconfirmed. Hopefully I'll be able to see soon but my friend is pretty sure that he caught a glimpse of an octopus in his tank. It's been a couple of years since he added any live rock to the tank and it's never been seen before. He's also had a constant problem of disappearing hermits and snails with no tell tale "clicking" of a mantis in the tank. If it is an Octopus it's the first I've ever heard of one hitchhiking in.

-Rogue

[J_T]

that's certainly interesting.

That's the thing about the other post. When I read it I kept thinking it has to be a joke but it is my understanding that it isn't.

You never know about a hitchhiker octopus. One of my LFS's has a hitchhiker jellyfish.

[Sea of Sorrow]

Alright, I'm way on the late side of this, but I seem to have a couple of stories rattling around...

Just recently, my wife just had to have percula clown and a yellow tang for her tank, so we went down to our semi-local fish shop, (we were new to the area and were trying-out the new shops). Welp, our perty new tang and spunky percula were netted, bagged and, well...bagged. I've been playing around for a while now with fish, but I'd never seen the fish bags put in paper bags <black plastic, yes...paper, no> before and thought it was a bit odd, but time and tired got me, so, paperbagged fish in hand. As you all are probably imagining, the fish bags leaked. When we got home, we carefully picked-up our bagged fish and started to take them inside. There's one catch, we hadn't, up to this point, noticed the wet bag bottoms. You guessed it, booooof! Her bag and mine both gave way at the same time. The first thing that ran through my head was about how impact as the plastic bags hit the ground would probably stun our newest additions into the big aquarium in the sky. As it turns out, that worry wasn't necessary. Both plastic bags exploded on impact. Sooooo...I holler to my wife to unlock the house and open the door while I dig in the mud <dirt and gravel driveway> for the flopping critters with my bare hands. I was able to scoop tang and perc up, run in the house and flop them into the 10 gal. hospital/quarentine tank...mud and all. No acclimation period, no nuthin' but panic, fish and mud. Welp...we now, four months later, have a percula named "Lucky" and a YT named "Muddy."

...then there was the time when I had two 125's decide to "hyperhydrate" my basement (while I was at work)...

...or when the heater on thank housing my Frontosa colony <cichlids> fused while I was out of town for a few days and came home to "fish soup"...

...aaaah, the FUN involved with this hobby...<I really do love it!>

[pmcadams]

omg Gatour I just saw this. What a story. Do tell some more!!!

anyone else?

[supahtim]

^^^bump surely you guys have some new fish stories?