GARP

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Thanks! Great advice. We moved the floridas back to the 150 today. When we netted them into Garps tank we hurt their slime coat a little and I'm always worried about infections and stress.

I made a sling out of some sheet plastic and steel rods so we could wrap them up without hurting them. My wife is an expert fish netter, but it always wipes off a bit of slime coat. The slippery plastic didn't scrape them like the net does. Once they were in it, the sling was closed tight around them and once they were out of the water, there was no struggle. Worked great! I'll have to make a much larger one for Garp when we move him to his next tank (soon!!) and eventually a huge one for his forever tank.
Moving a powerful fish is quite a thing. Not so bad when they're dangling off a fishing line, totally different when they're a pet In your living room!
 
I had no intention of keeping Garp with other fish from now on, and I'm sure most of our experts would agree gars are better kept alone or with similar size gars, however this is a special case. image.jpeg
This is Pedro. He's been the tankboss in our 150 for several years. My wife had a special place for him, since he only has one eye and when we got him, he was basically a dead fish.

He had big chunks of flesh on both sides missing, his front fins were snapped in half and his tail fin was basically gone. What happened was the previous owner tried to move him with a net and mangled him very badly. He thrashed so hard he basically tore himself to shreds. They posted him on a Facebook forum and we got him for free.

Pedro lived in a bucket for a month. I changed his water twice daily and we kept him medicated the whole time. My wife would pick his limp body out of the bucket and wipe meds on all his wounds. I think it was pemafix and melafix. I don't know. I was just in charge of changing the water. Drugs and stuff are her deal. After two weeks, about half of his left side just sloughed right off and was in the bucket one day. I thought he would be a goner for sure, I could see his organs inside. She said it wasn't the end so we kept at it. After another week the tough bastard grew new skin and everything. Two months total and he was good as new. Impressive animal, he's around 12 inches right now.

Unfortunately he is very mean towards ALL other fish, and has been getting worse. My wife finally fell out of love with him when he ran our 4 year old little catfish (some type of synodontis) around the tank for a full minute. She was going to put him in a bucket of ice, so I decided to try him in my tank.

At least one of us is home at all times for the next month because of our work schedules, so if there is too much ruckus we'll just seperate them.
 
Garp and Pedro are doing great. They get along very well. Moved them out of the 210 and into the 4 foot cube I mentioned in the original intro. Filtration is 2 fx5s. Working great. I'm going to spend a week or 2 dozen getting the 600 ready for them. Will post pics once everything is setup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom