Miracle story: If you're in the mood for a read

Mikeeyy

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 17, 2008
327
0
0
NSW, Australia
TRUE STORY!

Hey guys i just wanted to share an interesting story with you, which happened just a few days ago.
The story goes like this...
About 2 weeks ago perhaps more, my heater had mysteriously broke and seeing as its winter here in Sydney at the moment and in the area i live in nights get below 0degrees. i also have no space for some of my tanks to be kept inside so i keep them in the garage and it gets really cold in there. So i moved all my fish and had to put them temporarily into another tank with a heater as the water was already really cold and the fish were already lying on the bottom of the tank.
I had 4 fish in the tank a 4inch red devil, a 5 inch Convict x Texas hybrid, a 4 inch Jag and a little 2inch Convict x Texas hybrid which was from the same batch as the 5 inch Contex (i lamely nicknamed them lol sorry). i had sold the rest of that batch to my LFS, but kept these two for some strange reason, sort of a favoritism sort of thing, i couldn't seem to part with them. Particularly the 2inch one, it had a special tail.. haha a "deformity" some others might say, but to me he was perfectly fine and had a big appetite so yeah i kept him.

Anywho back to my story.

I moved the three bigger ones easily to the other tank, but i couldn't seem to find the smaller Contex my tank had heaps of caves i made from rocks and being small i couldn't find him at all, i idiotically assumed the worse and left it. So 2 weeks later.. i cleaned out the tank to get it ready for use again, as i removed all the rocks from the tank a small fish hovered toward the front of the glass, i regconised it straight away cause of the tail.. and i was really annoyed with myself for not looking harder last time.. then i noticed that its colours were to my suprise still intact, dull but not white and its eyes were still black, but marbley (not sure if that makes sense) but enough to know it didn't look like a dead fish should look after 2 weeks. So as i took a closer look i noticed it was twitching, it seemed to be breathing at a very slow rate and its fins moved every now and again. i knew straight away it was definitely still alive and i was super amazed.. the water was so cold i could barely keep my hands in it whilst removing rocks.
So quickly i found a plastic bag and i put him in with the freezing water and i floated the bag in another tank..

and put some of the warm water in every half hour, hoping not to send the fish into shock or something.

For a moment it was touch and go and i thought i lost the fish from stress.

But after about nearly 2 hours i released him into the tank, he went straight to the bottom and just lay in the corner,
At this point i had 2 thoughts; it was either unable to cope with the sudden change and was dying slowly, or it had burst its swim bladder and was doomed. But not wanting to get ahead of myself i left him again for another half hour, watching over it to see what would happen.
Just when i was about to give up, my lovely Jaguar "Kat" Came along and gave the little fella a nudge, literally a nudge, wasn't aggressive.. seemed like she was just seeing what was up, And in an instant, It got up and started swimming around slowly at first and made its way into a pot, which to its surprise belonged to my 2inch Juvie FH. With one flare of my FH the contex was sent away, and from that moment it just kept swimming around the tank as if nothing had happened. One of the most amazing things ever i think.. And what a strong and hardy fish! Must be the convict blood LOl its perfectly fine until now :)

Anyway for those who stuck around and read the entire thing.. haha thank you and i hope you enjoyed my little story :):) just wanted to share.

Mikey:)
 

TwistedPenguin

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Jan 21, 2008
2,551
3
38
Oklahoma
What a wonderful story!! Yea, I'd definitely say it's the Convict in him/her lol
On a Toughness Scale of 1-10, I do believe Cons would rate a 15. Good save :)
 

terminalMTS

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 12, 2008
728
0
0
marysville,WA
i am happy for you. i lost a heater recently and didn't notice. it is summer here so my temp was swinging wildly between night and day. it took one day before one of my parrots turned white. i checked the temp, it was fine, all the parameters, they were fine, and he was dead the next morning. i did a WC the day before he died and my wife called me at work to tell me he was taking a turn for the worse. i asked her what the temp was (it was early in the morning) and that is when i found out my temp was changing drasticly. anyway, this is a lesson to spend the extra 5 to 10 dollars on shatterproof heaters. he liked to ram the heater and did so for over a year before it killed him.
 

Mikeeyy

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 17, 2008
327
0
0
NSW, Australia
Woahh im sorry to hear about that TerminalMTS, A Parrot too, that sucks man, not only are they cool fish, in my area a small 3inch one already costs $80-$100.. But yeah, i learned my lesson. My fish ain't as fancy as yours but a lifes a life and farout was this fish a fighter, definately gona hold on to it.

thanks for the replies all :)
 

Mikeeyy

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 17, 2008
327
0
0
NSW, Australia
azn_boy AKA fish freak;3197745; said:
any pics of the juvi flowerhorns =D
yeah man here, you can see them on another post i put up a little while back..
HTML:
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=247092
They arn't spectacular as you can see.. but im still a FH noob and these are my first guys, so im still happy.. I'll See what happens when they grow up, hopefully they turn out "okay" lol but yeah :)
 

Natural_Born_Killer

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Dec 2, 2008
1,386
2
0
41
Netherlands
Great story there! Glad to hear the little guy made it through all that!

Tough little fish...

Any photos of him now?
 
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