“Lost” the biggest fish in my African tetra tank…

[Magnum Man]

Assuming it “went over the wall” my Male Interuptus… ( Congo Tetra ) was the dominant fish in the tank…he was continually chasing the females, and “flash battling” with the yellow tail male… there are a lot of hiding places, he could have wedged himself into, but suspect he was showing off or challenged into leaping, as I can’t find him in the tank anywhere… the tank is open topped, but being built in, has walls above it, to the ceiling, on 3 sides, with only one narrow side open… he would have had to pull a Salmon move, and jumped against the significant current, and over the filter, that completely covers the open narrow end of the tank, and would have to have missed a few Pothos vines that go across the open end over the filter, that would have bounced him back into the tank…
There was a history of challenging between him and the yellow tail male but no fin shredding… so I’m guessing that bravado got the best of him… I looked on the floor of the work area behind the tanks, but didn’t find him, he may have flopped under the stand for the other tanks???
Disappointing, as he was a nice looking fish

 

[Magnum Man]

Actually some of the Brachardi were bigger, I could have worded it as the longest mature or most dominant… if there is anything good, is that at least that was probably the cheapest to buy, & most commonly available fish in the tank, most easily replaced… but I had another dominant male interuptus at the time, die a year ago, that was the dominant fish in the tank back then, unexplained death ( that was when I was adding brine shrimp cubes frozen to the tank, and at that time I also lost the dominant Denison in another tank l, so I suspected that I either got something bad in a package of brine shrimp cubes, or both of those aggressive eaters had issues with eating frozen cubes, it was at that point, that I started thawing them in a shaker bottle, of RO water, before adding them to the tanks ( no unexplained Dominant fish deaths since ), but that obviously wasn’t the issue here, as I have no body… anyway, I now have 2 females with no male…

 

[Magnum Man]

Interesting… one of the Blood Cap Moons, is showing interest in the female interuptus, that the missing male used to chase… she must be an attractive fish, as she was getting the undivided attention from the missing male, as well as interest from the yellow tail, and now the blood cap moon

 

[GaryE]

You have some expensive rare, hard to replace fish in there. If you lose the brichardi, for example, it could be 10 years before you see more again, if ever. There have been a lot of cool fish I didn't breed and went looking for after that were no longer available in the trade. Once you start looking at higher priced rare fish, you look at fish that have a way of dropping out of sight.
There are several beautiful fish I haven't seen for 15 or 20 years.
So I would think about putting a new Congo in there. Farm bred, a possible vector for diseases the wilds have never encountered, easily replaced if you ever lose the rare tetras... would it be worth losing the whole tank for?
I view jumps and such as sad but effective population reductions.

We become accustomed to steady supplies of things we want, but there are very few North American dealers in Congo River fish. The market is really small for big expensive Characins.

 

[Magnum Man]

As crowded as the tank is. I probably won’t replace that one any time soon… all the blue diamonds are looking better… I still don’t expect that smallest one to make it. But it is eating well… I’ve been fine grinding foods especially for him…

those "Congo Tetras" seemed easy to spawn... maybe not to get fry, and raise??? but it would seem like there would be more private tank bred interuptus out there???