Have you guys ever had a freak accident with your fish?

For me, it was this “oil pull” tube attached to this filter I got. I wasn’t happy with this HoB, but no point in shipping it back via Amazon. So I kept it.

The oil pull filter is basically designed with a “+” and has some space. I never would ever believe a fish could ever get in there. Boy, was I wrong.

Few days into owning some corydora’s, one of them decides to be curious and somehow lodged himself into that “+” on the tube. This happened at 3 AM - 4 AM.

Fortunately I hadn’t gone to bed yet and passed by the tank, I didn’t understand where he had gone. Then finally I found him, halfway stuck in the “+” tube.

I popped it off and had to pull gently on his tail and he was able to fortunately get out. It was bad though because he must’ve been stuck for some time as his eyes were bulging and face. I have a photo.

Few days later his eyes went back to normal, and so did he. Weeks in now, and he’s ok.

I ended up putting a Fluval Sponge on the end of the tube, cause I know they’d absolutely would try to go back in there since they’re curious fish.

He gave me such a scare.

(I’ve also seen fish get stuck in those Co2 glass things, not my own fish but others.)

 

I recently sucked up a Dwarf Golden Barb while doing a water change. Fish often get close but don't get sucked up so I didn't think much of it when one got close but he shot up through the siphon and was shredded by the guard that the hose has. Very unpleasant experience.

 

I bought A 20$ gold nugget pleco once. I sealed every tiny hole in the lid because I heard they were jumpers. But 2 weeks later, he was on the floor.

 

The closest i would call to a freak accident, was a few weeks ago i moved my scissor-tail rasboras to a different tank. One of the netted trips had 2 fish in the net. Couldn't find all 6 of them in the new tank a hour or two later no matter how many times i counted or looked. Well, i went walking back to the tank they came from to triple check i got them all out and felt something cold and wet under my foot. Turned out one of the rasboras flopped out of the net in transport couple hours before and died on my wood floor.

 

I have Electric blue acaras who have spawned a few times over the past few months. I went to clean out my canister filter and found one small fry at the bottom of the canister. Probably been there a while. Put him back in the tank and my big male ate him immediately!

 

Not exactly an accident as it was my fault, I was trying to siphon up some Laetacara fry, but didn’t think to cover the end of the tube and the female, trying to defend them got her head sucked into the siphon. She was too big to get completely sucked in. I quickly lifted the tube out but she didn’t drop out, her head was stuck. Without thinking I quickly pulled her out (should have blown through the other end of the tube). Her head was scraped, but luckily she recovered quickly, within a few days there was no sign of the injury. I felt really guilty though.

 

I have one of the green machine uv filters on my smallest tank which has a detachable inside pump with a 90 degree elbow on intake end. Was using it during tank maintenance to blow stuff out of hard to reach places. I stuck it to the glass to grab a tool. Came back less than a minute later and one of my full grown siamese algae eaters had swam into the elbow and broke his back. In the 5 years I've been fish keeping I've had 3 fish jump out of the tanks at night and die. Super upsetting.

 

I recently sucked up a Dwarf Golden Barb while doing a water change. Fish often get close but don't get sucked up so I didn't think much of it when one got close but he shot up through the siphon and was shredded by the guard that the hose has. Very unpleasant experience.

Oh gosh! I'm so sorry, that really is a bad freak accident!

 

Had a female Apistogramma hongsloi run into a piece of driftwood at full speed while being chased by the male. She died a week later from the injuries sustained the accident.

 

When I first got bettas, I was terrible at it. Those tiny tanks that say they're fir bettas? I put 2 in that thing and put a divider in it. To make things worse, I had them on top of my dresser with my rat who would always come out and end up drinking their water because I didn't think they'd need a top. One day, I noticed one of them were gone and I thought my rat ate it, because I looked everywhere and never saw it. About 3 days later, I found it all shriveled up on the floor right in front of my dresser. It was then that I found out they could jump out of their tank. Since then though, I've gotten the right size tanks with heaters and filters, and I made sure to always keep a top on the tanks

 

When I first got bettas, I was terrible at it. Those tiny tanks that say they're fir bettas? I put 2 in that thing and put a divider in it. To make things worse, I had them on top of my dresser with my rat who would always come out and end up drinking their water because I didn't think they'd need a top. One day, I noticed one of them were gone and I thought my rat ate it, because I looked everywhere and never saw it. About 3 days later, I found it all shriveled up on the floor right in front of my dresser. It was then that I found out they could jump out of their tank. Since then though, I've gotten the right size tanks with heaters and filters, and I made sure to always keep a top on the tanks

Sorry about your betta.

I kept bettas for years, and I remember a few years back I had a 10 Gallon for my girl. All was well, etc. I had forgotten to put the lid on one day, and she jumped out, it was late in the night too when she did, and I thought I was hearing things when I heard a small splash. The sad part is; the dresser was super high up where she was housed and the way the room was (living with a friend at the time who had way too much stuff to the point where you could barely walk) had a table blocking the dresser and bed. There was no way to pull it back and me to go reach for her if I had

I was so sad.

I am glad I live in my own place now, but yeah now I keep the lids on.

 

Guess we had one this week. Came home from work the other day, all my bedroom tanks the filters were OFF. Initially, didn't do much damage, but it ended up taking a toll on my black phantoms...

 

I have a "freak accident" kinda thing to share.

This happened many years ago when I was a kid, but I was already very into fish. I read a lot so I knew what I was doing with my tanks. However, even though my tanks were covered, a black mollie managed to jump out. I didn't discover him until hours, or days later. He was all dried up under my bed. He looked like fish jerky.

I picked him up and carried him into the bathroom, then threw him into the toilet for his final farewell. But, before I flushed it and sent him on to that great fish pond in the sky, my mother called me into my bedroom and made me clean it up to her satisfaction.

It took a while.

Then, I finally finished and went into the bathroom to flush the dead mollie.
Luckily, before I pressed the handle of doom, I looked into the bowl. My mollie was swimming around in there like nothing had happened.

Well... I was shocked, to say the least. But, I netted the fish and put him into a little ten-gallon hospital tank. I filled it mostly with tank water from the big tank, but I used some tap water to bring the temperature down close to what it was in the toilet bowl.

Then I watched him carefully for the next week. He never got ick, or showed any signs of distress from being dried out like he was. After about ten days, I put him back into the community tank, and he was happy to be back home.

I know some of you think I am kidding. But, he was dried up like beef jerky. I have no idea how he 'came back to life.' I'm telling you, he was stiff as cardboard when I picked him up.

 

My first fish was a betta in one of those little 2.5 gal kits. Terrible I know I didn’t know enough, so I would put the betta back into the little mermaid et store cup he came in and change all the water. One time I for some reason as a dumb 12 year old thought that in order to not get dirty water back in the tank I would just scoop the fish up with my hands. He understandably started flopping around and I dropped him, above my desk. He was then flopping on the desk and in my scramble to grab him and him trying to get away he flipped to the edge and fell BEHIND the desk! I had to pull out the desk to grab him, and I just plopped him right back in the plastic cup and put the lid on so he couldn’t get out. I set the cup in the middle of my desk so it wouldn’t go anywhere and then shut my bedroom door and took a walk outside to cool off, then finished after.
I know so many bad things were wrong with that story, I have definitely learned and improved so much sense then.

 

One of first tanks I set up I got given the tank and filter. So same day I filled it with the garden hose, used conditioner and turned on the filter and light. About half an hour later got a lift to the lfs with my mum and came home with zebra danios.

The fact I didn't know anything about the cycle was not my undoing! it was my belief that danios were cold water fish and the fact it was about - 5 outside, snow on the ground didn't cross my mind.

I have no idea what temperature the tank was when I poured the bag of danios in (yep I had no idea about acclimatising either) but those poor fish probably went from a nice 70f down to glacier river water temp.

They dashed to the bottom where they proceeded to lay on their sides for the rest of the day. The penny dropped for me eventually it was too cold but I had no heater or any way of sorting it. The shock killed some but I think 3 or 4 survived. Good example of the toughness of danios!

 

Sure have, and I am still mad about it.

We are on well water of poor quality. So at that time we were using "spring water" in 5 gal bottles from a water supplier.

The last time instead if spring water we were given distilled water. Our 37 gallon suffered a pH crash. If I remember correctly the pH went from 7.2 to 5.8 I could be off a bit but it was a dramatic change. By morning we lost 10 glass cats, several corys and ottos as well as all but two of the Juvenal angels. The two that survived became the mated pair Fred and Ginger. Fred was blind in one eye from that. Members that have been here a long time might remember them. They lived 7 years for Fred and 8 years for Ginger.

Right after that tragic loss I decided that I would have complete control over the water and built this:

I Finally Got Around To Doing A Writeup On My System. | Reverse Osmosis - Deionization Forum | 367737

 

I had a cherry barb get stuck in the end of a piece of cholla. Twice. You could tell it was the same fish because none on the others had scratches. I had to cut her out of the wood with really sturdy wire cutters. I then had to stuff the ends of the cholla with polyfil and it looked super stupid. Like aquascaping with giant q-tips

 

Two heater malfunctions. The first one failed to shut off when it malfunctioned and essentially fried my entire school of lemon tetras, the temperature kept increasing. I wasn't home when it happened, I came back to find the school dead and a very warm tank.

The second one turned off in the middle of January. A northeastern US winter so it was pretty cold. I was running my tank pretty hot at the time as I had a German ram. The ram was the only casualty, all of my glowlight and Colombian tetras survived. Still, it sucked.

 

When I first got my puffers, I made the mistake of putting an Anubias plant in my tank without waiting for the glue holding it to the rock to harden. One of the puffers went up and bit a chunk out of the glue, and he couldn't open his mouth after that for awhile. thankfully, he's still here today and bless his heart he has no interest in biting anything that isn't food

 

I don't know if it would be considered a freak accident, but once I woke up at 3:00 in the morning to the sound of a rumbling in the tank. I turned a dim light on, and noticed that my 6-in long goldfish was stuck halfway inside the entrance of a ceramic cave, like this one on the right.
I was just a teenager and wasn't sure what to do and started panicking. I tried turning it upside down, gently pushed on his head, wiggled the cave softly, and nothing worked. Eventually I wound up just putting a little more pressure on his head and he popped out. Both sides of his abdomen had scales missing but he didn't seem affected by it at all once he got out. Had him 3 more years after. 6 years later he's still alive with my sister. That makes him at least 9 years old, and it was just a feeder goldfish!
Needless to say, I destroyed the cave and have never used anything like that since.