A rescue? NOOOO........!

[jjohnwm]

I've put off updating on the Hi-Fin, in hopes of having a newer picture to illustrate its growth. But I'm a lousy photographer, the tank is poorly placed and located for picturetaking, and the fish is just too nervous and always outlasts my patience when I creep in for a shot.

It's about 4 inches long now, roughly twice the length when I brought it home, making it the biggest fish in its current tank. It doesn't look emaciated at all nowadays, it's filled in nicely. It's now living with roughly 30 adult Green Swordtails, a couple of Jordanella Flagfish (which I introduced to control hair algae, as harvesting it by hand still freaks the Hi-Fin out), and a smallish Hypostomus laplatae Uruguayan pleco. Water temp is about 55F currently, so the food intake of the Swords is greatly reduced. Between the Flagfish and the Hypostomus, algae is controlled but still very evident.

The Hi-Fin looks pretty good overall. It doesn't hide and is always on display, but is still nervous and flighty when I move too quickly or reach in to do any maintenance. Diet is BugPro sinking pellets, various Spirulina flakes, frozen adult brine shrimp, freeze-dried Tubifex, and possibly Cherry Shrimp hatchlings. Actually seeing it pick up a piece of food and eventually swallow...still requires the patience of a saint.

Sadly, the other Hi-Fin that was left in Ivan's tank didn't make it. He never saw it eat anything and it just wasted away, lasting a couple months before expiring. His tank is around 60F and also contains 3 Goldfish, so I don't know if the Hi-Fin simply couldn't compete.

My Hi-Fin's days are possibly numbered as well. I thought it would be moved into my 360 Goldfish tank at the end of the summer, when my outdoor fish came inside. But that just didn't feel right , so I left it where it was and added the rest of the Swordtails. The Hi-Fin, although nervous when I'm around, seems to completely ignore other fish even when they descend en masse around it at feeding time. So...I've decided that it's going to be moved into the bigger tank now and will have to take its chances. There's nothing aggressive in there...Goldfish, Gymnogeophagus rhabdotus, Cichlasoma dimerus, some Garras, a big Hypostomus...so perhaps it will adapt and survive. Aside from the Gymnos and Garras, most of the fish in the 360 are bigger than the Hi-Fin, and the majority of them are bottom-sifters to some extent. That, combined with the fact that there is substrate in that tank, means I will need to watch the Hi-Fin carefully for signs of weight loss, as food on the bottom will not last long and he will need to up his game to get his share.

If I can't get a pic before the move, photography should be easier in the bigger tank.

 

[jjohnwm]

Today was the big day; Dracula (the granddaughters choice...) went to his new home. In order to snag him out of his old digs, I took the opportunity to remove a few big handfuls of Hornwort, thinking to reduce his available cover, along with one of the two big driftwood pieces in the tank. He freaked out immediately when this began. I took the bucket of Hornwort upstairs and outside to dump it out on the compost heap. When I returned, maybe three minutes later, I saw to my amazement that Dracula was casually cruising around the tank, picking at algae on the remaining piece of wood, looking completely relaxed.

He practically swam into the net, and exited it almost as casually into the Goldfish tank. He calmly swam the length of the tank, ignoring and ignored by the Goldies, and then cruised into the back section and disappeared behind a large piece of wood.

Both tanks had been given a roughly 85% water change two days earlier, with straight well water as always, so water chemistry was pretty much identical. Temperature in both was 55-56F.

Now it's just a question of whether or not he can feed himself among a few dozen other enthusiastic eaters. Will he lower his standards and stop being such a Prima Donna after behaving that way for the past six months? Or will he remain true to form and just slowly waste away?

Tune in next time for the next thrilling installment of "What's The Deal With This &%$(#@ Fish?!?"

View attachment 1570906

 

[jjohnwm]

Dracula remained invisible for a couple days after his relocation into the Goldfish tank, but then appeared one morning looking as though he'd lived in there all his life. He even appeared as though he had been, although I didn't see him make an appearance at feeding times at first. He did look a bit nervous when the Goldies crowded him in a group, but of course he has gone from being the biggest fish by far in his previous tank, to being one of the smallest in this one. We shall see...

 

[danotaylor]

Nice one mate! He looks really cool swimming amongst the goldies!

 

[danotaylor]

jjohnwm can you tell me what this is? Looks like the teeth of a sinister Goldie eating cave dweller

 

[jjohnwm]

jjohnwm can you tell me what this is? Looks like the teeth of a sinister Goldie eating cave dweller

View attachment 1571359View attachment 1571360

Lol, good eye! That is indeed a set of teeth, but they are attached to a deer skull so not really a predatory concern. It's grown over with algae, but if you look closely at the first pic in my post and hold your mouth just right you can see the eyehole immediately behind the Hi-Fin's tail, and an antler base just to the left of that. The white blur above and to the right of the Hi-Fin is the nose, reaching to the right hand edge of the pic.

 

[jjohnwm]

So Dracula has been in the 360gallon Goldfish tank for a month. Like everything else about this fish...results of this experiment are still up in the air. Like the fish itself, the accumulation of data and feedback regarding his status is sloooooooowwwwww....

My main concern about this set-up is the amount of what I consider "over-feeding" I seem to be doing just to ensure that enough food gets into this fish. A school of enthusiastic and greedy Goldfish, all larger than he is, makes things problematic for him...and me. Add in 20 or so Gymno cichlid grow-outs which are smaller than he is but still get way more than their share of food. Then factor in that the tank has a pool filter sand substrate, which makes seeing the food and keeping track of how quickly it's eaten very difficult for me. I'm feeling around in the dark in terms of quantities of food to provide and I'm not comfortable with it.

The fish still looks okay. He has grown much deeper-bodied compared to the semi-emaciated waif I brought home, and his belly profile looks healthy to me; neither too flat nor too fat. But this seems to come at the cost of everything else in the tank being overfed. Bear in mind that this isn't a fish that I sought out and purchased because I "needed" it; rather, it's a rescue that was brought home on the spur of the moment to save it from going into the freezer for later use as fishing bait.

Here's a rare shot of him industriously working over an algae-grown log at the back of the tank, while 40 or 50 other fish are busy surfing the front glass, begging for chow. No joke; actually seeing him actively feeding like this is a rare event.


But he's been at my place now for almost 7 months, and I still don't feel comfortable with his progress. He started out at roughly 2 inches in length, and is now approaching 5 inches. Is he healthy? Thriving? Or merely wasting away at a very slow pace? I just don't feel comfortable making a judgment on that question. Meanwhile, there's no denying that I have spent more time fretting and watching and worrying about this one single fish than likely all my others combined.

So, I've decided to leave him in with the Goldies and Gymnos until my backyard inground pond thaws out and the temperature of the water matches that of his indoor digs; likely around early May. Then he will be going outdoors with the Goldies for the summer; the pond has an abundance of several types of algae. I feed that pond very sporadically, mostly to keep the Goldies tame and aware that I am the source of treats. The vast bulk of their diet consists of natural algae, bugs, etc. Judging from the comments in the thebiggerthebetter thread where Viktor transcribes his communications with other folks experienced with this species, he should do well there, might even put on significant growth.

That'll probably last until around the end of September. If he is still alive then...and if I can find and catch him...I'll cross or burn that bridge when I get to it. I'll update on this guy when I move him outdoors.

 

[danotaylor]

Bloody marvelous mate!

 

[jjohnwm]

Yeah, okay, this isn't working out. Dracula still looks okay, but I think I need to remove him from the Goldie tank; he is, at least right now, still too small to make a go of it with those greedy piglets. At feeding time, the Goldies react as expected: nom, nom, nom, all mouths in high gear, pushing and shoving and elbowing each other aside for the chow.

The HiFin just isn't up to the challenge. A couple hundred small pellets come cascading down at feeding time, and only perhaps half even reach the bottom. It's a Goldie/Gymno feeding frenzy. The HiFin rubs his 2 brain cells together and comes to the concluson that he should maybe venture over into the melee. As he approaches, he comes across a single isolated pellet on the bottom. He stops, hovers over it, considers his options, and then finally picks it up for a taste. Rolls it around in his mouth for a bit, then spits it out and positions himself for another go at it...but it's gone! It's either been inhaled by a passing Goldie, or in some cases a Gymno has snatched it up as it falls from his mouth to the bottom. Either way, the thief is long gone and so is the pellet. So the HiFin bumbles along until he finds another and then the whole frustrating performance is repeated.

The frustration...maybe his, and certainly mine...is incredible. The fish no longer shows the nice round post-meal tummy that inspired me with confidence when he was in his previous tank. He's not wasting away...yet...but he just isn't cutting it in this community. He's like a spoiled rich kid taken from a gated community where he was pampered and babied and coddled...and suddenly thrust into an inner city ghetto and told to fend for himself on the street.

So, he's going back into the 120gallon sparsely-populated tank where he's spent all his time since I got him. And I don't have dozens of tanks and thousands of gallons of water to play these games. The idea that I am devoting so much time and tank space and general fretting to this one spoiled-rotten fish is...irritating.

Plans still call for him going outside in a couple months...but that's it. No more kissing his behind anymore. In the jungle, he must either sink or swim, no more help from me. I'm going to make sure that he's nicely fattened up and in prime fighting shape before his outdoor vacation, but after that I wash my hands of this.

In other news...I have somehow managed to get myself mixed up with another rescue. A local lad brought home a SA Lungfish, maybe 7 inches long, from a trip to the city just before Christmas. His mother took one look at it and nixed the idea...so the Lung is now quarantined in a bin in my library.

If he can convince her to relent, I will return it to him, but...in my heart I know that I'm probably stuck with this fish. I had a SA Lung for a long time in the previous millenium, and I liked it. Not quite as cool as an African, but also much less likely to open up my hand if I get careless.

Here's the little guy from above, rummaging through the leaf litter and algae scrapings that "decorate" his temporary home:


This is likely my last activity in this thread; the last thing I need or want is an actual ongoing "rescue" thread for me. Each of these fish will get its own thread going forward...if they continue with me at all going forward. I'm afraid that posting a rescue thread seems to be attracting rescues...

 

[danotaylor]

Never a dull “life in the fish room” moment mate! Happy dayz