What is your worst fish keeping experience?

What is your worst fish keeping experience?

 

Probably seeing my Pearl Gouramis die in front of me. They were from PetCO and unbeknownst to me they weren't exactly in the best of shape. Sadly, I had never seen a healthy Pearl and bought them anyways - 1 of them survived and is looking absolutely amazing.

 

Wel, my worst experience was when I was younger and knew nothing about fish and killed several Goldfish and a Betta. :'( Since I set up a real tropical tank and actually did some research, nothing too bad has happened, except that my Otos keep getting sick/injured.

 

When I had to haul a huge piece of driftwood out of my 75G tank with a Clown Loach stuck in it.
Hauled it out, laid it out on the floor, chiseled him out with a screwdriver, watched him flop all over the floor. Eventually the driftwood with all holes blocked and the Clown went back into the tank. The first thing he did was go back and check out the hole he got stuck in. go figure!!
Carol

 

When I first started into this hobby I added fish way too fast and killed 4 innocent, beautiful panda cory's. I felt sick! Patients is key to being successful in this hobby.

 

I'd say when my bucket overflowed onto the floor
and also I did the same as 0morokh when I was like 6

 

I'd say when my bucket overflowed onto the floor

heh heh I hope my parents don't know how many times I've done that...not to mention the end of the siphon falling out of the bucket onto the floor while siphoning... ;D : :-[
hehe don't tell anyone I admitted that, especially my mum... ;D

 

I'd say when my bucket overflowed onto the floor

heh heh I hope my parents don't know how many times I've done that...not to mention the end of the siphon falling out of the bucket onto the floor while siphoning... ;D : :-[
hehe don't tell anyone I admitted that, especially my mum... ;D

that and having ICH twice

 

my angel had white spot but he is still alive cause of me

 

My worst experience must have been the day after I bought my first fish and one of my Zebra Danios got stuck in the filter and I had to take the whole filter apart to get him out. He's ok now but he did split his fin and it took a while to heal. :'( It hasn't happend since! (Touch wood!!!)

Gwenz

 

my 1st go with my 20 gallon all my fish died off it was a nightmare

C W

 

Omorrokh, lol, that happens to me a lot actually, haha. I often find myself so absorbed with cleaning my tank's bottom that I forget about the other end of the siphon tube. Oftentimes the other end ends up spilling dirty water directly on the floor. One time I didn't notice the water spilling out until I felt a wet floor beneath my feet.

 

My first water change, dam that was painful

 

I'd say when my bucket overflowed onto the floor

me too and also an ich break out which killed 3/4 of my fish which was b4 I knew about all tips

 

Having all my fish die in 2 days because I did not now about Nitrite.
I just though you by a tank kit and feed fish . boy was I wrong.


1 male and 2 female Mollie
1 male and 1 female Swordtail
3 neon tetra
1 baby Mollie
1 Albino Corydoras Catfish.

All DEAD ???

 

Omorrokh, lol, that happens to me a lot actually, haha. I often find myself so absorbed with cleaning my tank's bottom that I forget about the other end of the siphon tube. Oftentimes the other end ends up spilling dirty water directly on the floor. One time I didn't notice the water spilling out until I felt a wet floor beneath my feet.

glad to hear I'm not the only one...

 

My worst experience was watching Azul die of dropsy after suffering from one thing and another for 2 months and then finally having kidney failure.

Rose
:'(

 

I'm sorry :'( That would be so sad.

 

My worst experience would have to be when I was raising my baby platy's. I was down to two babies and decided to let the bigger one swim around outside the net. Well, he was not big enough as it turned out. My female betta took off after him within a few minutes, she managed to get most of him in her mouth with me chasing her around the tank with the fish net trying to stop her. The baby didn't survive, and I ended up putting the betta in her own 5 gal. tank. I have one baby that survived to make it to the community tank and she is doing wonderfully.

 

My worst experience must have been the day after I bought my first fish and one of my Zebra Danios got stuck in the filter and I had to take the whole filter apart to get him out. He's ok now but he did split his fin and it took a while to heal. :'( It hasn't happend since! (Touch wood!!!)

Gwenz

This doesn't seem so bad now that I have actualy lost one of my fish. I lost him around 4-5 days age. Whaen I say I've lost him, he is actualy not there any more. I took everything out and checked everywhere, even the floor (just in case). He's just sort of vanished....

Gwenz

 

My worst experience was about a year ago when I was filling up my pond; when it was done I switched off the hose but left it in the pond and somehow it caused a vacuum and sucked all the water out - I only found it late the next afternoon - the fish were all lying very still in the mud at the bottom in the scorching sun.. I thought they were dead by the smell but amazingly when I prodded them they were all still alive so I filled it up sharpish and they're still all fine today!

 

Holy cow they survived all that??!!!!

 

I know! It just goes to show how hardy common goldfish are lol

 

Id say there are two... recent one: Buying 4 angels from the LFS to find one was on its way out before it even entered the tank. I tried to get him going but I think it was just too late.

Earlier experience. Setting up a 180 Gallon tank for one single pair of Bifasciatums... equiped with escape grate for female. I placed her in first and made sure she knew the escape route... there were a few options to choose from... so a little chase with my hande a few times confirmed she knew where to go. Then in went the male, a big boofhead of a fish about 14 inches long. So I chased her to one side and plopped him in. Straight away I could tell she was a bit fearful and she did the wise thing sticking to her side. After a week there was some mating behaviour going on but she was still sticking to her side. One fine day I went off to work and returned home latish, busy day, to find her dead with a bite mark to the head. That was pretty upsetting. I was pretty mad at him, but how to tell a fish off? Plus at that stage Id had him for the full 3 years of his life so was kind of attached to him. That by the way was his second victim. I should have given up but I tried again... this time getting a hold of the largest female I could find (cost me a fotune to bribe it away from the owner). This girl was so big I had to readjust the escape holes in the grate. Lo and behold a day after her arrival she had gone to the other side and spawned a week later. They were great parents too. I have a scar to prove it.

Which brings me to a kind of silly story to end my sad tail in a little joke..... I had a curious friend that was intrigued by these guys and their fry swimming around like one big happy family. I told him how aggresive boofhead was (yeah that was his name) and no matter what I said I couldnt convince him that he would attack should he put his hand in the water. Boofhead would attack me for trying to touch a particular rock he was in love with? So when he had fry he was outright scary. Anyway eventually he stuck his hand in to disprove my theory...then came blood.

Thinking back about boofhead now.. makes me realise how much I miss the old fella. :'( It was seriously the worst tank you could have though.... there were no plants at all , anything placed in the tank would be attacked severely... I tried many times. Every intake, outake tube, heater were all under heavy protection. But once he found the right partner she lead him around by the you know what

 

" But once he found the right partner she lead him around by the you know what"

well most males in general are like I had a dog that wouldn't let anyone near him unless u had food we got a female and they got along just fine some1 had some say so and after we got that female he was as kinda as can be idk what she did him but it helped ;D

 

Killing my Poor pleco by mistake!!! some of my guppies got ich and I immediately treated with white spote meds, methylene blue. He was floating the next morning! I only found out why he died when I went onto fishlore.com! shame I still feel terrible!

 

tank leaked about 5 gallons of water. That ruined a lot of stuff, homework included

 

When I had first started keeping my own fish, I had a bad experience.There was a storm and the electric went out for a week.All of my fish dies from not having heat.

 

I'd say when my bucket overflowed onto the floor

heh heh I hope my parents don't know how many times I've done that...not to mention the end of the siphon falling out of the bucket onto the floor while siphoning... ;D : :-[
hehe don't tell anyone I admitted that, especially my mum... ;D

That has happened to me so many times because I watch t.v. while changeing the water in my two largest tanks. ;D ;D
Tom

 

Other than losing our first Betta to dropsy (not knowing he wasn't constipated), probably when I added some algae-removal stuff to the tanks and a few hours later found our 1st Betta almost dead in his tank and all the platys almost dead in theirs. about 6 or 8 hours of hard work, a run to walmart and seeing our betta look like he was ready to die a couple times, we finally got things back to normal by some miracle. I wish we'd been participating & reading here at fishlore then & not been so ignorant. Ironically, losing Mario (our 1st betta) was what led me to start really getting into the fishlore community and realize what a great resource we have here.

 

I have a couple. actually one is my sister's. My sister was a noob and got a betta for a half gallon container in her room. Put water from the sink into the tank. I watched my sister's betta freeze in 40 degrees F water. She never continued the hobby after that.

I have a crayfish and some minnows in a 10 gallon. One of the minnows got stuck underneath a rock in the cray's cave. Before I could do anything, my crayfish ran over and ripped up the minnow alive. He then lifted up the rock acidentally and NUMEROUS CHUNKS OF MINNOW FLOATED UP AND GOT STUCK IN THE FILTER. and then I had to get the chunks of minnow flesh out of the filter. It was a crazy night. lol

 

ewwww that is nasty I've had to do some similar stuff like that. My finacee got a killer danio that ripped up some fish and guess who got stuck picking it out of her air stone decorations.... Yep me!!!!

 

watching from my 1st batch of male guppys 2 out of 5 die, then 2nd batch of male guppies 4 out of 5 die. nothing worse than your fish being ill but not knowing what to do, so you just helplessly watch them get poorlier. also i've done the syphon thing. I now put newspaper down everywhere. I get so intent on sucking up the snails and dodging the fish that I forget to check the water level in the bucket, or my pipe flips out of the bucket and the tank water goes all over me and the floor!! I wouldnt want to check the microbial content of my carpet around the tanks! yuk! also when I had a galaxy stuck between a rock and the glass and thought he was dead, moved the rock and he swam off. next day he vanished. just like gwenz' did! to this day he never was found ???. only other worst experience was the twice a day 50% water changes in the 45gal without a syphon. that was back breaking! glad I joined fishlore, there would have been countless bad experiences otherwise!! I now get advice before I do anything!!
tan

 

My worst had to be recently, I had my entire tank go belly up in a week. there wasn't anything I could, I got the torment of watching them all die, that has to be the worst thing that can happen to anyone in this hobby.

 

My worst had to be recently, I had my entire tank go belly up in a week.  there wasn't anything I could, I got the torment of watching them all die, that has to be the worst thing that can happen to anyone in this hobby.

aww that's awful. it is horrible watching them die. did you get to find out why? old age or disease or what? good luck with your next fish. give everything a good clean (boil if I you can), if you're not sure on the cause of death, just in case its a hardy bug that can re-infect your next fish.
tan

 

Mine had to be when I kept malawis.
That time I didn't know about the nitrates etc, my nitrate went high all of a sudden and they started dying!
More recently I was doing a slight clean, my sword jumped out of the bucket, and I couldn't find him!!
Those 5 minuntes were JUST TERRIBLE! Lucky, my sister found him, AND HE WAS STILL ALIVE!

 

Well thankfully it wasn't a bug!!!!! It was water quality. When I moved accross campus for the summer my pH spike way up 9.0 did too many water changes trying to bring it down and killed my cycle off. So now i'm treating it with some stuff to help re-establish my cycle in order to keep fish again

 

My worst had to be recently, I had my entire tank go belly up in a week.  there wasn't anything I could, I got the torment of watching them all die, that has to be the worst thing that can happen to anyone in this hobby.

Do you know what happened?

 

This thread is great, but soooo scary. I need to make myself not read it too often or I'll have nightmares and start imagining worst case scenarios all the time.

 

I had a batch of 35 or so baby platy that I put in their own 5 gallon tank. I covered the filter intake with the netting but didn't even think that the gravel would be a problem. Over the next few days I dug five or so babies from the gravel and there were 5 or so I couldn't save. It got to the point where I had to just bite it and take all the gravel out and risk stressing them out. Then the netting some how was a little loose and there were two babies inside my net! They didn't seem to struggle in there so I figured they were strong enough to fight the filter so I took it off. The next morning I woke up and counted 7 missing babies. Sure enough I check my filter and managed to save all but one of them. So the net of course went back on but I still had a few poor babes get inside the net and still had to keep checking my filter for strays. I zip tied the darn thing. Now the tank seems like a pretty safe place for them. I can still count about 25 so I guess it was worth all my effort! We'll see, that was just within their first 11 days of life!