Heart In Mouth Momments During Your Fish Keeping

[Betta5]

Took the net out of the tank, dident notice the guppie inside, 5 min later, found him and put him back, still have him

 

[dwarfgourami]

Pretty well every time I have to net a fish is a heart-in-the-mouth moment, tbh. I know the theory, but my reflexes are just too slow, and I never seem to see well enough and well- I'm just plain clumsy

 

[Chri$]

My worst moment has to be tripping over a chair and nearly knocking over the tank - to make matters worse the tank is upstairs in a bedroom, so if it had have fell over it would probably have gone through the ceiling!

 

[jenny6165]

well a few weeks ago my 3 clown loaches went missing 24hrs after adding them. so i took out all the decor, purposely keeping one of the hollow ornaments filled with water to avoid having to empty it, it only has a titchy hole in the top.
anyway, all ornaments out and no clown loach to be seen!

so i got to the sink to empty out the hollow ornament cos i realise it reeks! i guess same water in there for long time does make a stench! didnt wanna chuck the manky water into the tank. out pops two clown loaches, straight down the plug hole!!
so i quickly chuck the plug in, out pops the third. seconds later, my missing pleco comes flying out as well. both fish are flipping about in the sink! no water! so quickly fill the sink with freezing cold water


lucky both fish were none their worse for wear after their ordeal except for a slightly damaged fin on the clown loach.

thats gotta be my worst moment so far! poor fishies down the drain

 

[sketchy]

well, i havent got my first tank up and running yet, but on one of many trips to the lfs in aberdeen (waterworld aquatics - seems very good in there btw. fish all seem miles more ative than pets at home!) my girlfriend was looking at some fish she would like to stick in the tank after xmas when the tank has cycled, when she noticed something on the floor. she crouched down to see what it was and it suddenly jumped! turned out a fish (not really sure what it was) had escaped its tank and made its way half way round the store before scaring the s@%t out of the missus!

was very very funny, and you may be pleased to know that the fish was returned to its tank!

 

[dthoffsett]

My worst moment was when a very bad bacterial strain hit my cichlid tank 6 weeks after I had added the fish. I went to feed them in the morning and there were the bodies of 3 catfish and 2 cichlids floating, and the others were laying on their sides on the bottom panting. There had been no prior symptoms, everyone had fed well the night before, and everyone was active. Then in the morning, boom, dead. Water conditions were perfect. Several hours of posting on here finally tracked it down to a relatively common bacteria found in tanks, I was just unfortunate to somehow get an extremely aggressive version. So in goes the strongest bacteria meds I could find.

So 24 hours later, 13 fish are dead. I was able to save the rest of the fish, but had to endure a week of bacteria meds that turned the water purple, with lots of foam on the top. It took around two weeks of water changes to get the water clear again. I still have the original surviving fish, and have added others with no problems. But that whole week was horrible, watching them die and not being able to do anything about it.

And wuv, I've sucked my fair share of fish and shrimp up the syphon, fortunately I haven't killed any. My stupid rasboras are just so curious and are constantly trying to swim up the syphon.

 

[Richie Hell]

Had another one this morning when I thought my Betta had a big white lump on his back.

I was quite worried and went told my girlfriend. She went over and said "there's nothing there you silly boy". "Yes there is, on his back!" "Nope!".

So I walked over and it was gone. Most likely had some dead daphnia or shrimp sitting on him and I was worried about a tumour or something!

 

[chibi]

I replaced the stuff in my filter and little white worms were swimming around in my tank. It scared the bajeebus outta me!!! I couldn't sleep I was so scared! When I found out they were harmless, I was sooo happy!

 

[Gurglar]

When I had my 2 goldfish I was siphoning some of the water out with a tube and took my eyes off the tank for a spilt second and wam one of my goldfish get sucked halfway up the tube. I quickly blew him back out and thought he was fine as he was swimming around but then had a closer look and his guts had been ripped through his side.

 

[Dragonscales]

I haven't had too many moments over the years. The main one was a heater that decided to blow while in the tank and really screwed with the water (the water had a really bad burnt plastic kind of smell). I caught it early enough though and moved most of the fish into a spare tank (one fish died before I learnt the heater had died).

Oh, I also busted a piece of coverglass the other week due to sitting on it. I had my heart in my mouth due to what could have happened to my ass rather than the cover glass itself (it still annoyed me that the glass broke too though, hate my stuff being wrecked), does that count?

 

[VampirePlec]

one day i was cleaning out my tank and put the llid on the floor (something i neva do!) all afternoon i stept over it untill i braught the last bucket of water in all of a suden crack! stupid me steped on it this was 4 in the arvo so i had an hr 2 run round n find a lid, with nothing 2 cover the tank whilst i was gone (tank full of female fighters and danios both known as jumpers) it is an unuaual size tank so as i thought no luck in finding a suitable lid and way too expensive 2 send away 2 get a piece of glass cut. it was cheaper to buy a bigger tank so i did fish were much happier luckly no jumpers whilst i was gone. later on i came accross a glass place and was able 2 get an off piece of glass the perfect size for $5! w know have that tank up n running again

 

[Underwurlde]

Both scares during water changes.

Once a harliquin jumped out and only AFTER the water change did I notice him - popped him straight back in & is still fine today.

The second time was WIERD: OK, so I do my weekly water change and everything is tickity-boo. Go and get a coffee for my efforts & on the way to the lounge I notice what looks like a huge winged slivery insect crawling across the hall carpet up against the skirting board. I dump my coffee down & go back to investigate well Intreagued - huge insects don't really occur in the UK.

So i'm down on my hands & knees thinking 'what the hell is this thing, it look just like a shrimp....'

PANIC

Shrimp are orrid things to pick up (you know, like crabs or indeed a large insect), so I just literally pick it up, run to the tank and bung him in. He's still alive today! My shrimp had crawled at least 5 meters across difficult terrain (carpet) and survived! It must have taken him at least 30 mins to get that far!

Now I regard shrimp as the ultimate escapologists - they've escaped before (disappeared) from my covered tank. One day I was fixing up my PC that sits on the floor and THREE dead shrimp were behind it . They can escape from the smallest hole (that I have now taped up on my lid) and when they do escape seem to be attracted to light - i.e. the blue lights of death on my PC, and the light shining through my front door that attracted the one that survived his bid for freedom.

 

[QuotheRaven]

I have smashed two pieces of cover glass which still need replacing...had Kuhlii loaches, Swordtails and Yoyo Loaches escape...I have posted my yoyo story when it jumped from the tank down under my stand I went to pick it up "BANG" Eye spike straight into the finger flops back down to the carpet and gets it's eye spike caught and tangled in the carpet...I grabbed some scissors and thought It's either going to die of suffocation or die of my cutting it so I blindy cut and it flopped straight into the net next to it...sadly that yoyo died from a power outage but was a real battler....I have no luck with yoyo's or spiny eels

 

[Joemuz]

I had one last night. I was sorting out the plants and i had put some disposable gloves on, a few minutes later white clouds of water where coming out the wrist of the glove!
I only forgot they have talk on to help put them on. I was so worried but all the fish are ok thismorning!!!

 

[andywg]

Biggest one for me was while taking the 6x2x2 tank up the 2 flights of stairs to my front door. Half way up the first batch of 7 the tank touched the concrete and we heard that horrible crack sound of glass on concrete.

Fortunately it was not a massive crack and a second bottom and internal patch has seen it out nicely.