What’s your worst nightmare regarding your fish/pets?

[OliveFish05]

imagine being a young child during covid (i’m only 13!)

I have a younger cousin who was 5 when Covid was worst around here, shes so little the masks didnt fit her face, but you couldnt get new masks anywhere so she just had to deal with it. What was harder though was having a newborn cousin during quarantine and not getting to see her for so long, after 9 horribly longggg months of waiting.

 

[OliveFish05]

Super easy...barely an inconvenience, (to coin the phrase)...

 

[Sunnyspots]

I have a younger cousin who was 5 when Covid was worst around here, shes so little the masks didnt fit her face, but you couldnt get new masks anywhere so she just had to deal with it. What was harder though was having a newborn cousin during quarantine and not getting to see her for so long, after 9 horribly longggg months of waiting.

Like another pregnancy!

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

View attachment 140157

Keeping fish is TIGHT!

 

[DAnCSF]

Like many it's being away from home for a length of time and not being around react to an emergency - leaking tank....

 

[SarahPar]

Untreatable disease that slowly spreads and kills the fish.

Currently dealing with it - cryptobia in imported endlers.

Ugh.

 

[ThatFishGirl6231]

My 12 year old rode out the 2020 lockdown OK (she was 10 at the time). We lived in the country at the time and went for lots of long walks. We felt sorry for people in big city apartments, though. That must have been terrible.

i live in a big tourist city it sucked

 

[FishFinatic77]

Like many others, I fear that I would not be home for some kind of emergency, and then I come back to my animals dead.
Another fear is that my neighbors would come and hurt my chickens. They really hate them, especially my rooster.

 

[KatieMR]

I had a dream that I came downstairs and realized that I had ordered a whole bunch of tanks and the delivery guy had just mounted them onto the wall like TVs and plunked all the fish in. It looked really good (like something you'd find in an interior design magazine), but I knew the tanks were going to fall off because they were HUGE. On top of that, they had put all the wrong fish together without cycling the tank. The tanks were way overstocked and the aggressive fish were in with the little community fish, so even if the tanks stayed on the wall (miracle of miracles), the fish were all going to die anyway.

 

[KatieMR]

Not going to lie, that dream cured a lot of my temptation toward MTS.

 

[Trop65]

Finding a leaking crack in my aquarium in the middle of the night....

 

[ThatFishGirl6231]

i also have another one. my fish getting some disease that i’m not ready for and me needing to go out and buy stuff but having no money and my parents won’t chip in (not even a loan) because they don’t like my fish.

 

[hurgerburger]

Mine is that someday when I’m on vacation, one (or more) of my fish will die but because I’m not home, the body will stay in the tank decomposing and make a huge ammonia spike and then all my fish die.

are we talking about real nightmares? because that would probably be the dream i had where i dropped a bottle of windex in my 20 gallon. Otherwise, probably an extended power outage in the winter (though that probably won’t happen since i live near a hospital)

 

[Colin_T]

i also have another one. my fish getting some disease that i’m not ready for and me needing to go out and buy stuff but having no money and my parents won’t chip in (not even a loan) because they don’t like my fish.

If that ever happens (fish get sick and no medication available), wipe the inside of the glass down, then do a 75-90% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day, and clean the filter.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

The water changes and cleaning will significantly reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and give the fish the best chance of surviving. This buys you time to get help over the next few days.

Salt can also be used for most minor bacterial, fungal and protozoan infections, as well as gill & body flukes and anchorworm, and it can help if there is a nitrite problem. It is easy to keep a couple of kilograms of rock salt in an airtight container. Use salt at the dose rate of 1-2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres of water. Keep salt in the tank for 2-4 weeks.

Most fish health issues are caused by dirty tanks & filters, poor water quality, and new diseases being introduced with new fish.

Regular filter cleaning and tank maintenance will go a really long way to preventing disease outbreaks in aquariums.

Quarantining new fish for at least 2 weeks will prevent most diseases from entering an established aquarium.

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

i also have another one. my fish getting some disease that i’m not ready for and me needing to go out and buy stuff but having no money and my parents won’t chip in (not even a loan) because they don’t like my fish.

The odds of that actually happening, especially to someone relatively young and new to the hobby, are frighteningly high!
Been there, done that and got the T-shirt.
(Actually, I had a few thousand T-shirts made and they all sold out very quickly ).

I'd suggest saving your pennies and slowly building up a supply of Emergency Items. These would include spare heaters, airpump and stones and maybe even a spare filter and tank.*
(*A spare tank is ALWAYS handy, but then we have a tendency to fill it and stock it and then need to find another really 'spare' tank I use my 'spare' tank to keep all of my Emergency Items in). Only some of these will be used on a regular basis anyway, but I always have these to hand;

Algae remover.
Anti-bacteria medication.
Anti-fungus medication.
Anti-ich medication.
Aquarium Salt...used on a regular basis.
General Cure medication.
Live bacteria.
Plant food...used on a regular basis.
Water Conditioner...used on a regular basis.

Obviously, proper care and maintenance of your tank will greatly reduce the need for any of the medications, but I strongly believe that it's always better to have something and not need it, to needing something and not having it! (Blame my Scouting and 'Be Prepared' ethos). True, meds are not cheap, but they have a long shelf-life, especially if un-opened and these should be used with utmost care, only after other solutions to whatever issue you're dealing with have been explored.