Anybody Got Any Horror Stories?

[TropicalJuwel]

Sorry I'm not in Loughborough any more , graduated in 2006 but still use the same login name for all the forums I use . . . I've moved back home to Kent now. The shop was Abacus Aquatics in Sidcup, south east London area.

Nice shop this one, I use it all the time. By far best in this area.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Horror story as of late: My cory got stuck in the siphon and almost lost her eye! It was bulging and red...she layed around gasping for air looking really stressed!! I was gutted! I really thought I was going to lose her!!

Well, about 2 hours later, she spawned all over the tank. As of today, I cannot even tell which one got injured. They all look normal now.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

A while back I pulled all the bogwood out of my 620T and placed the lot in a bucket, while I was trying to net some fish to move them to another tank. Some 15 minutes or so later I hear a mini whoppee cushion sound coming from the bucket, so I slowly pull everything out to find a Synodontis nigriventris!...

Put it back in the tank and it lives to tell the tale!

 

[parker313]

10 Gallon Nano Reef:
I was doing SO well with my nano reef. I had it running for well over a year with no casualties. Then, as we were on our way out the door one day, the 18 month old toddler decided to "help" and feed the fish. He dumped in the entire bottle. When we came home later that day, I was horrified to see that the entire tank was completely green and everything was dead. It was a total nightmare

I have come home from trips a couple times and panicked at first about "colorless" fish

I had a near miss last Christmas with my 55 gallon s/w tank (now converted to my angelfish tank). I had an overflow box and sump tank underneath. I turn it off when we go on vacation and put an air pump in the tank itself b/c when the water level drops too low in the sump due to evaporation, the pump is just running dry. When we went out of town for Christmas, I turned off the overflow/sump system and put the air pump in the tank. What I completely forgot is that the heater was on the same outlet strip as the skimmer/sump pump so my poor little nemo clown fish went 10 days, in winter, with no heater, PLUS we had turned the temp way down in the house to conserve energy. I felt awful and I have no idea how he survived, but he did.

 

[Million]

Glad I'm not the only one. No CO2 related catastrophes mentioned yet though...

I recently installed pressurized CO2 on my 75l freshwater tropical. While doing tank maintenance I managed to set the valve far too open. I came back in the afternoon to see all the fish gasping at the surface or being thrown limply in the current, and all the shrimp clamped down to plants paralyzed. pH had shot up, as you might expect.

I caught all the livestock and put them in dechlorinated water in lunch boxes, while I turned off thegas and increased surface agitation and did a big water change. Some fish came back round, as did the shrimp, over the next few hours. I lost 2 apistogramma agassizii, one sparkling gourami, and four ember tetra

 

[Betta_Shark5678]

I have two horror stories, one isn't mine but my best friend's.

I had a male crowntail betta in a 1/2 gallon tank (I was a newbie to bettas then, I didn't know!) in his tank I had a flat rock. One night I got back to my house, looked in the tank, and the bettas tail was somehow stuck under the rock, and he wasn't moving! I had been gone for a few hours, but after rinsing off my hands, and removing the rock my betta swam up to my hand and nudged it, before he had always been afraid of people

My friend's story is slightly move horrorific. When she was about 5 she had a large tank in her bedroom, without a lid. Everyday or so, a fish went missing, they assumed that the fish had jumped out and their cats got them. About 10 years she found the fish under her bed when she was repainting her bedroom

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Ive been super busy at work and havent had the chance to do water changes in a couple of week.s Check my oscar tank as my sevs were panting, and the nitrates were 160+!!! Took two water changes to get em down.

 

[Gilli]

Bought a large brand new tub of fish food and while feeding the fish left it on the top of the tank hood (which is in 3 parts) and knocked the whole tub into the tank!!!! Spent the next 2 hours trying to get it all out of my tank and filter and doing water changes etc and then spent the next month doing water changes every day because of a mini cycle!!

 

[Scales9]

A couple of weekends ago I decided to add sand to my tank so took out all my fishes put them into big buckets next to the tank and started cleaning out the gravel, keeping a very close eye on the fish and my Cats, got everything set back up and started filling the tank, that's when I noticed the dog on the stairs chewing something, I ran over opened her mouth and saw one of my guppies laying accross her teeth, I literally shook the fish out of the dogs mouth and to my surprise and relief she was still moving put her back in the bucket carried on filling the tank( now with one of the kids standing guard, put all the fish back in, the guppie had a small tear in her tail and some missing scales but has since made a full recovery..... And there was me only worrying about the cats.

 

[JDs4me]

I had a four foot tank in my rented room, 1st floor of a private house...was busy hoovering and reached the full extent of the cable reach so went back and unplugged. Pulled the plug up between the back of the tank and the wall and the plug got stuck...so I gave it a huge yank; the glass cracked, and 50-odd gallons of water poured out of the back. Ran downstairs to find a bucket to salvage fish and found water gushing out of the dining room ceiling light fitment; fuses blew for the lighting circuit...paddled through to the kitchen in a daze still looking for a bucket for my floundering fish...

Enter the landlady who up until that moment I felt had quite liked me...in fact I rather liked her as well...in fact I had hoped we might have a bit of a thing going...

Can't print what was said; rather colourful as I recall.

Saved the fish in a bucket with what water was left in the tank, a heater hanging in there - so that was all that mattered yeah?

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Had a heater crash that killed 300-400 jack dempsey babies

 

[Man of fish]

Had a filter crash that killed 300-400 jack dempsey babies

I thought it was heater?



I was doing my weekly w/c and I wasn't paying attention and I overflowed my tank. Before I noticed there was 1-2 gallons of water on the floor. That took a while to clean up

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Had a filter crash that killed 300-400 jack dempsey babies

I thought it was heater?



I was doing my weekly w/c and I wasn't paying attention and I overflowed my tank. Before I noticed there was 1-2 gallons of water on the floor. That took a while to clean up

You are right. I just cleaned the filter of my oscar tank so i must have still had that on my mind

 

[Man of fish]

Oh good I was thinking it happened again

 

[FishBlast]

If you want horror stories...

I received this community tank from a friend that could no longer take care of them (well, the water was murky, had no filter, fish that shouldn't be in there and TOO MANY fish anyway for the tank size)
I had 4 bettas (2 males, 2 females) in the same tank (around 40-50L). No problems between them and I didn't even know they were named Siamese fighters either.

Few days later, I saw this zebra danio without 1 eye. I thought he had a disease or something. The eye was clearly missing. I didn't know what to do, just told my mom since I was a kid and had no idea. My mom had kept fish before, but in just as bad conditions as I did without filtration and stuff.

Later on, not only had that danio died, but I woke up with several more danios swimming without eyes. It was like the Zombie apocalypse in my tank!
I didn't know who to suspect, as all fish looked peaceful during the day.
Then I saw guppies with shredded tails...
Didn't know what was going on until one day, near the evening, when I saw all 4 bettas cornering a guppy male and biting its head and tail.
I got so mad at those critters that I've separated them in a 25L bowl (they had some kind of filter but it was just some sponge disk). I held a grudge against them until the end (and their end wasn't a nice one either, I had neglected their water temp and put in too warm water and they kind of got boiled).


Then there was the time I was changing water and found my past favorite swordtail male dead inside a snail shell. The stench was unbearable. X_X Since then, I haven't put in any snail shells to avoid such deaths.