How The Heck Did He Survive??!!

[Oddball]

About 7 months ago, I had a SAL (Lepidosiren paradoxa) turn up missing from his tank. He was about 5.5 inches at the time. I thought he got into an adjacent tank and became a snack for someone larger.
Earlier today, I was doing a water change in the 1st aisle when I noticed movement inside a long unused tank under the rack. I couldn't tell what was moving through all the silt and muck. I netted out the long-lost SAL and it looks perfectly fine. I have no idea what it fed on. And, it's over a foot long now.

 

[arowana man]

kool

 

[Onion01]

lol, I love these fish gone missing and reappeared stories. I once had a zebra danio in a 10g with a plastic cup as the only decoration. One day it disappeared. I left the tank alone for 3 weeks, not running. One day I go to restock it, and there is the danio. It looked starved, but I still don't know how it survived. maybe it got sucked into the filter

 

[ZOO YORK 207]

Hahaha you gotta love lungfish..

 

[rjmtx]

Any missing children in the neighborhood?

 

[bigspizz]

Was there water in the unused tank? How far was the tank from the original tank? That is crazy. Didn't you have an octopus do some escaping in the past?

 

[ewurm]

Well, if they can live buried in mud for months, your tank was probably paradise compared to that. Nice pickup...err, save.

 

[JD_MAN]

Crazy story. Missing for 7 months and grows 6". Huh. They are an amazing specie.

 

[Oddball]

There was a few inches of muddy water in the unused tank and no filter. It had to feed on something to grow. Non-estivating LFs need to feed like any other active animal. I know he wasn't estivating since they reduce to 10% of their metabolic rate. So, there's no way it would have grown 7" in that time.
The tank he was in was about 8 feet from, and 3 feet down from the tank he escaped from.

 

[Davey_8313]

Wow, that's an interesting story... cool though.