Fish Tales.

[sir_keith]

We have a thread for 'What did you do with your tanks today,' we have a thread for 'Members' fish pics,' but we don't have a thread for members' fish stories. So I'm thinking that this could be a place where we can share our 'Fish tales.' Prior experiences in the hobby- how you got started, adventures along the way, successes (and failures) in fish keeping and breeding, how interests have changed over the years, just about anything hobby related- past, present, or future- could find a home here. I don't know whether this thread will work or not, but to give it a little push-start, here's a Fish Tale from some years back that was inspired by my finding this little piece of ancient history in amongst some old fish paraphernalia-

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And so-

One of the first things I did when I moved to New Haven (a. k. a. 'Elm City') in 1975 was to contact an ACA Board member in the area to ask him about local fish clubs (this being the pre-digital age, everything was done either by telephone or in person). He directed me to the Elm City Aquarium Society, which met every month in the basement of a local American Legion Post (or was it VFW? Or Elks?). I contacted them and went to the next meeting, which was attended by ~50 enthusiastic members and featured a 'Bowl Show,' a slide presentation, and lots of fish talk. It was fun. After we adjourned the real fun started, with the die-hards meeting at the bar upstairs for beers and more fish tales. It was there that I met Lee Finley, a key figure in the ACA during the early days of the 'African Invasion,' and one of the first people in the country to specialize in Tanganyikans, and breed Tropheus and other rare (at the time) fishes.

For the next monthly meeting I brought my own entry for the bowl show, an unknown Malawian that had come in as a contaminant in a shipment of Pseudotropheus zebra 'Red Top.' He looked like this-

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This species eventually came to be known as Pseudotropheus macrophthalmus 'Orange Shoulder;' today it is known as Tropheops sp. 'Chilumba.'

I looked for a female for my pretty male for years, hoping to breed this rare new fish, but never found a suitable mate. This was no doubt due to the fact that I was expecting the female to be a mostly silver fish with a similar shape; in fact T. sp. 'Chilumba' females are brilliant orange-yellow, like this-

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And so, this particular Fish Tale didn't have the hoped-for happy ending, but I enjoyed keeping that single male T. sp. 'Chilumba' in my 150g Mbuna community for several years nonetheless.

 

[fishguy1978]

It has always amazed me how distinctly different most of the mbuna males and females are.

 

[lloyd378]

My journey into the hobby started in the mid 80s, when I was ten years old…. A year prior to me turning 10, we went to my aunts house for a family reunion. I distinctly remember seeing her huge fish tank with a large Oscar in it. Looking back now, I laugh as I’m almost certain the Oscar was only about 6” and their tank was only a 55 gallon. The tank itself was poorly lit with a turquoise colored substrate. This led me to bug my parents for a tank almost daily…..

the next year, for my birthday, my parents bought us ( I say us, as my parents also were excited about finding a tank) a used 29g tank with black substrate. It was on a wrote iron stand and I was so excited to get it going. After setting it up, we went to a local petstore in Puyallup Wa, called “brigadune”. It was a great shop with one large tank when you first walked in, then four rows of double 20g tanks….

they had a community row, a semi community row, a cichlid row, and an oddball row ( think clown knives and the like). My parents convinced me to go the community route so we ended up with 1 angel fish, 2 black mollies, 1 opaline gourami, 6 cardinal tetra, 2 kuhli loaches, and what they called back then a “freshwater flounder”.

we kept them all alive for about 2 years and then I became bored with them and wanted to try convict cichlids.

at 12, my parents let me move the 29g to my bedroom ( on top of my dresser) and I traded in all the fish ( which really had outgrown the tank), for a male and female convict. They bred regularly and I loved being able to get store credit for the babies to offset the cost of fish food ( since I had to buy that with my allowance).

when I turned 16, my dad bought me a larger acrylic tank from his friend. This new tank (48x15x20) afforded me so much more room. This tank is still my pride and joy. It has been in continuous use since then ( I’m 42 now). The only things I’ve changed are the inhabitants ( now has my mulities in it), filters, and lights. The eheim filter is still working! This tank went to college with me (4 + different houses), back to an apartment in gig harbor, then our rental in parkland, and now in my bedroom in our house in Frederickson!

from my senior year in highschool all the way through my years in parkland, I kept the same fish…. My 12” Oscar named cowboy. ( man, I have some stories about him from college but that will wait till later).
Over the years I have dabbled in almost every type of fish ( minus saltwater). I had as many as 14 tanks going, but I’m currently down to 9 ( including the one in my classroom). I’m going to go take a picture of a picture of “cowboy” to show you all.

 

[lloyd378]

This pic of “cowboy” with a smaller Oscar I called tombstone… you can still see the eheim in the back. This pic was taken in 1998.

 

[DMD123]

For me the interest of keeping fish came when I was young and would win goldfish at carnivals by getting the ping pong ball into the fish bowl. Then when you won they handed you a comet goldfish in a bag and off you went, no instructions or anything. Of course these were sickly things that didnt live much more than the night you got them home. This added an air of mystery to the hobby and the question of how to keep them alive.

As the years went by my step dad had a small tank and I remember we kept swordtails, gourami, along with other common fishes. But with all the moving around from him being in the military the hobby was not really kept up with until he was out of the military and we settled down here in WA.

Then in the late 80's with tons of awesome shops around the hobby was reignited in our home. My step dad had a 50B with community fishes and I had at one point 5 tanks in my bedroom! But back then tanks were not as cheap as they are today and my largest was 37g (the tall one). It was a time of under gravel filters and a ton of doing things wrong. I would dread "cleaning" the tank because it meant I was to break it down completely and scrub it in the yard and then reset it up. No knowledge of the proper way to seed a tank with beneficial bacteria or how bad this was. At least I used dechlorinater... My favorite store at the time was on 48th and Pacific in Tacoma, called Tropical Fish Imports. A few of us old timers who lived in the area remember this place. This is the point where I fell in love with big cichlids. I had kept Oscars, midas and all sort of fish that my little tanks should never should have had in them.

As the 80's ended, graduating high school, moving out on my own and basically becoming a grown up, I tried to stay in the hobby but it just wasnt something that was happening at that time. I joke that once I turned 21 there was just that phase where I was having too much fun...

Then years went by (over 20+) with no fish, getting married, raising a family. Then my son graduates, moves out and things are just quiet and mellow at the house so I bring up buying a fish tank to the wife. I dont think she even knew I had kept fish in the past or that there was even interest in the hobby. Well she said fine and I think she regrets that to this day, lol. With the internet now available, the learning began... UG filters were out, there were these "flowerhorn" cichlid I was wondering where they where catching in the wild, and the need to properly set up and maintain the tanks. Wow my eyes were opened! I soon bought a tank on Craigslist, a 65B and went to Petsmart and got a midas cichlid for it. Again with research I realized that the tank was way too small so I soon replaced that with a 120 gallon, this was found to be too small because I wanted a community of large fishes so it too got upgraded to a 210. Then the multiple tanks started coming in. I will say the wife has been a real trooper during all of this but it gets better.

With us kind of being 'empty nesters' the search was on to downsize, but I knew I wanted a bigger tank so we agreed to buy her grandma's house and remodel it around a new 300 gallon I ordered online. Well here it is about 5 years into our newly remodeled house and Im up to 7 tanks, 686 gallons total. And now Im done, really, no more tanks or upgrades... well maybe just one more.

So that's my story of how I got into fishkeeping.

 

[sir_keith]

...And now Im done, really, no more tanks or upgrades...

Famous last words!

 

[DMD123]

@sir_keith, great topic. I like the part where you mentioned "successes (and failures) in fish keeping".

For me my biggest lesson learned or failure was the need to quarantine new fish. My first back into the hobby fish was a common Petsmart Midas, nothing particularly special about him, just an inexpensive cichlid that got me back into the hobby. After multiple upgrades this fish was in a 210 gallon with red hook silver dollars, a gold spot (L001) pleco. Been with me 3 years at that point and had been housed with quite a few different fish and had a very easy temperament so it got along with just about anything. A non-aggressive amphilophus is pretty rare and I had a great one with a great personality, and it was a part of the family at this point.

I guess it was this ease of adding new fish over the years and having no issues that made me do something stupid... I then bought two different wild caught cichlids (different vendors) to add to the 210 gallon tank without a separate quarantine time before adding to the tank, and that is where it all went bad. Just did the acclimation and dropped them in. Not sure what hell was unleashed but I lost both newly added wild caught cichlids, my 3 year old midas, most of my red hooks and even the big healthy pleco. I basically just did a tank cleaning and tried to start with some new fish but was having the same ongoing issues that decimated the previous fishes. I ran tons of different parasite meds and stuff through to try and deal with whatever this was but no success. Any new fish were added were just dying off, just a slow death, not eating and wasting away.

Another hobbyist suggested I needed to break it down and start from scratch. This is what I did including baking gravel in the oven, disinfecting the tank and filters and starting completely fresh. Then the issues disappeared. This is why I quarantine all my fish before they go into established tanks or the fish get moved into tanks that were meant just for them to begin with. This was a hard lesson to learn but it also made me equip myself with a basic fish 'first aid' box that I keep on hand which includes SeaChem ParaGuard that I like to treat newly acquired fish with. I also keep basic anti-biotics, Epsom, and Aquarium Salts along with a few different parasite medications. Ive still dealt with stuff that has stumped me but at least now I feel prepared to tackle these things.

 

[sir_keith]

It has always amazed me how distinctly different most of the mbuna males and females are.

Yes, the sexual dichromatism of these fishes is remarkable. It's also interesting that in most of these species the males are blue, while the females are yellow/orange. There are notable exceptions, however, like Maylandia lombardoi, shown below, in which that pattern is reversed-

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[sir_keith]

...For me my biggest lesson learned or failure was the need to quarantine new fish...

...I guess it was this ease of adding new fish over the years and having no issues that made me do something stupid... I then bought two different wild caught cichlids (different vendors) to add to the 210 gallon tank without a separate quarantine time before adding to the tank, and that is where it all went bad. Just did the acclimation and dropped them in. Not sure what hell was unleashed but I lost both newly added wild caught cichlids, my 3 year old midas, most of my red hooks and even the big healthy pleco. I basically just did a tank cleaning and tried to start with some new fish but was having the same ongoing issues that decimated the previous fishes. I ran tons of different parasite meds and stuff through to try and deal with whatever this was but no success. Any new fish were added were just dying off, just a slow death, not eating and wasting away.

...This is why I quarantine all my fish before they go into established tanks or the fish get moved into tanks that were meant just for them to begin with...

That was a nasty experience for sure, but one that we all encounter in some form or another, sooner or later.

The real problem here is that quarantine may not prevent these kinds of episodes when wild fishes are involved. When you add a wild-caught fish to an aquarium, you are adding not only a fish, but a whole array of microorganisms that the fish acquired in the wild (biologists call this the 'microbiome'). Most of these organisms are benign, but some of them are pathogens to which the wild fish has acquired immunity. It's analogous to our 'childhood diseases' like chicken pox or measles: you want your kids to get exposed to these pathogens early in life, when they cause mild disease, so they will be immune to the pathogen later in life, when it can cause a debilitating disease (think chicken pox in children vs. shingles in adults, both caused by the varicella zoster virus). This is an oversimplification, but it makes the point.

My approach to this issue has been to never add wild-caught fishes to an established tank. They go into a tank of their own, often permanently (as you mentioned), and if I ever do add tank-raised fish to that aquarium, I do so carefully, just a few at a time. Even so, surprises do occur. Another complication in handling wild-caught fishes.

 

[fishguy1978]

I do remember having an aquarium in the early '80s. We kept fancy goldfish. We would go swimming and fishing in the local lakes and rivers and would bring back crawdads and add them to the tank. Our fancy goldfish always had nipped fins. It wasn't until 2003 though that I actually got the aquarium bug. I had purchased 2 quarter sized red eared sliders from China Town in NYC. I started reading any aquarium book I could get my hands on. I was searching for botanical books that discussed planted aquariums as well. I housed my turtles in a 10g that had a seal fail and I was able to upgrade to a 50g breeder. CL was still in its infancy so it took me a few months to rehome the turtles. I was able to get take a part time position at a local fish store for store credit and save up for a heater, Fluval 403 and a Corallife PC light. Denisens of the Deep in Ft. Collins wouldn't sell me plants because I had an unheated aquarium and at the time this really bugged me. I wish more stores cared more. The dream became discus in a planted tank and when we moved to NYC where I was able to get a position with NY Aquarium Service discus became affordable. I now had access to wholesale prices on tanks and fish.
2007 we moved to Vancouver and I discovered the Wet Spot, Paradise of fish keepers. I was finally able to obtain 4 large wc discus. 2 greens and 2 heckels. Unfortunately, in moving from Vancouver to Auburn I bumped a curb and shattered my 65g which I could not afford to replace at the time. I took my prizes to a lfs and over several months watched them dwindle away and die.
We purchased a house in S. Tacoma in 2008 that only had space for a single 75g in the laundry room. It was not an ideal location as there wasn't any where to sit and watch so it was an easy decision to sell the tank. I had anubius in that tank that were purchased while in NYC. When we moved to our place in Fircrest I stumbled across an add for plants. A fellow in N. Tacoma was shutting down and so I met to get the listed plants. We swapped stories and discovered he was the hobbyist who had purchased my tank. I was standing outside ready to leave when he halted me and returned inside. He reappeared from inside with a bag holding the anubius plants I had sold him over a year prior. Those anubius now reside in @sir_keith's fish room.
More later.

 

[sir_keith]

...I was standing outside ready to leave when he halted me and returned inside. He reappeared from inside with a bag holding the anubius plants I had sold him over a year prior. Those anubius now reside in @sir_keith's fish room...

Great story! Once I discovered that the Anubias I got from you not only survived but seemed to thrive in my high pH tanks, I started to collect more of them, and now about half of my tanks are pretty highly planted (at least by my standards). Here's an example-



The Cryptocorynes in the foreground I acquired from @John58Ford, and after a period of acclimation, they seem to be doing well, so much so that I would like to get some more of them, but I don't know what they are! Anybody listening?

 

[fishguy1978]

Great story! Once I discovered that the Anubias I got from you not only survived but seemed to thrive in my high pH tanks, I started to collect more of them, and now about half of my tanks are pretty highly planted (at least by my standards). Here's an example-

View attachment 10197

The Cryptocorynes in the foreground I acquired from @John58Ford, and after a period of acclimation, they seem to be doing well, so much so that I would like to get some more of them, but I don't know what they are! Anybody listening?

They look like Wendetii. There is a bronze and a green varient both would well. Parva also do well as I have some in the Sumbu dwarf 55g.

 

[sir_keith]

They look like Wendetii. There is a bronze and a green varient both would well. Parva also do well as I have some in the Sumbu dwarf 55g.

Thanks! Have you tried C. balansae?

 

[fishguy1978]

Thanks! Have you tried C. balansae?

No, but any crypt's should work.

 

[fishguy1978]

Parva, wendetii green and bronze

 

[John58Ford]

but I don't know what they are!

Cryptocoryne wendtii tropica sp. red. the ones you got from me are 10+ generation clones from the original one so I'm not totally sure if I've caused any accidental traits.



While we're on the story telling page: I've only ever bought one of each of my plants, unless I've managed to completely kill one and want to try over. The crypt I have in my tanks was the first plant I ever bought for any aquarium ever, and only four or five years ago. The mother plant was purchased and planted in the 5 gallon "wet" side of my snake tank when I decided that he ate enough fish that I should just try to breed those "little guppies" I had been getting from the "cull/feeder" tank at my local pet shop for him. That little 5 gallon snake pond was the hardest biological filtration problem I have ever solved, and sure taught me allot about nitrogen conversion, mineral depletion/re-mineralization, gas exchange and vegetative growth. Within 6 months I had a river rock bed carpeted in crypt and way too many "little guppies". The kids sure seemed interested in the cute little fish and I felt like I wanted to give decorative fish keeping a try.... So I built a tank rack. More on that later as it comes up, I like how this thread is running conversationally.

Heres a photo story of that crypt:
At this point we had a nitrate issue

We bought this:

It became this:
So then it went in here too:

Then that got split into this:


But then my close friend got transferred so I dedicated a tank to his rehoming of fish and of course that tank needed one of these too(above the pleco cave):


And by the time I needed to get rid of some and had found this forum:

Hard to believe those last two are the same tanks. Even to me it's hard to believe the 3D29 and 20 long started like that. I noticed going through pictures that I have similair photo stories for several of those plants, the sword with the floating runner moved tanks 3 times before I ever snipped it. Several of it's full runners got cut/spliced, as have all the crypts. I couldn't tell you which ones were cut/splices and which were genuine runners tbh at this point. In the next few weeks here I'll be gutting the tanks down yet again and stretching all these plants into a new pair of 55s I've been working on getting set up. Another page in the story.

 

[DMD123]

Good stories from everyone!

I also have a story of success and one that is interesting as to a fishes memory.

After a couple years had passed with the incident of nearly the whole tank being lost to not doing quarantine first, everything was going pretty good with a big pearsei in my 210 gallon that was very outgoing and a large part of our family. She would always come up to the glass and interact. But now she was acting 'off' and stopped eating. The rest of the tank was fine but not her. After the huge losses I faced before I couldnt do this again. But all the different things I tried previously had really not worked and once the fish stopped eating it was hard to do anything but watch it die. So I did more research and decided on a more 'hands on' approach... literally. I would catch the fish, hold it in a wet towel and administer a medicated food mix with a baby syringe with tubing attached to it. Did this force feed procedure for over a week and eventually the fish got better and she lived on for many years.

The interesting part of the story is that after she was better and I stopped treatment she still acted 'off' and every time I approached the tank for anything she would go hide in the back of the tank behind some decor. She would eat but only after I was gone. So as an experiment I had my wife approach the tank and the fish treated her perfectly, came out to eat in front of her, interacted in every way it used to, but would have nothing to do with me. It took a little while but the fish forgave and forgot the whole incident but it was funny that it associated me with something bad so it would hide, lol.

Later I received a fish from a fishbox member that was quite ill. It was what they call 'duck lips' and its lips had become enlarged and it stopped eating. I did the same catch and force feed meds and it too recovered and was with me many years.

Those were two success stores I had in fishkeeping, always cool when you can get a sick fish back to health.

 

[sir_keith]

...Good stories from everyone!

I also have a story of success and one that is interesting as to a fishes memory...

What a great story! I have hand-fed some of my ailing pets in the past, but never a fish! And I had never heard of anyone doing so! Glad that it worked out.

I am not a bit surprised that the fish remembered that experience, associated you with it, and took some time to 'forgive' you. Animals- all animals- are far more complex than we give them credit for: they are intelligent, and they have feelings. Anyone who has ever lived with a pet of any sort knows that. It is an unfortunate consequence of our Western cultural heritage that we view ourselves as different, holding 'dominion' (whatever that is) over mere animals. This makes no biological sense whatsoever, as we all share a long and profound evolutionary history, one that can be traced even at the level of our DNA.

 

[DMD123]

A puffer story, Once upon a time...

I had my last puffer for a number of years and it had a habit of sitting atop a piece of driftwood and just 'watching' the room. Was a cool thing to see it completely motionless but its eyes just following the movement outside the tank.


The "perch"

 

[DMD123]

Another puffer story for you guys.

The same hairy puffer had been with me quite a few years and I noticed that it started to look a bit thick. I figured it was getting fat from a lack of activity and possibly me overfeeding. So I took action and put him on a diet. I fed less and less and it still did not seem to help, this guy was just plain fat. Then after about a month of barely feed him, one day I came in and notice it looked better, the bulk was gone. Yay he looked like himself again! Well I started a tank clean up with the gravel vac and what happens? I start to suck up something.... Eggs!

My hairy 'boy' was actually a girl and had been holding eggs! lol, I felt so bad for putting her on a diet for being fat. I assumed it was a male because it had been years and this never had happened before. Also I had subscribed to the belief that the hairier the puffer meant that it was male and mine was quite hairy. Was a totally funny experience for me.