Unique Cichlid Experiences

[chefjb1]

Thought I'd share one of my most memorable cichlid experiences and see if anyone else had a story to share.

Several years ago, I purchased my first cichlid... an Oscar. One night I woke up to the sounds of violent splashing and what appeared to be lights flashing in my tank. My Oscar had smashed the glass heater and was being electrocuted in his tank. What a show!!! I jumped out of bed and yanked all the plugs from the wall, sure that my big beautiful Oscar would slowly rise to the surface belly-up. Such was not the case; he was a bit lethargic but he was very much alive. I cleaned up the mess and went to back to bed hoping he'd survive the night. Again to my surprise, he did. The next day, I purchased a new heater and some feeder guppies. He had no interest in the guppies and completely avoided the heater.

That monster Oscar is still with me today. He's almost 14 inches long and appears very healthy. The weird part is he seems to have lost all of his aggression that night. Since that evening he won't eat live food... I had to switch to a 100% pellet diet, which he makes me toss directly into his mouth. Over the years he's upgraded his quarters and now resides in a beautiful 125-gallon "community" tank (the heater, which he never trusted again, is now in the sump). His tank mates include mollies, angles, danio, and a school of 20 neon tetras that he shows no interest in. I think he got lobotomized!!!!!

 

[guppy]

Frankenfish

 

[repair]

You know they use electro shock to modify behavior in humans.

I keep a lot of tanks and my stories are of things escaping...

One sunday afternoon I was taking a nap and my kids , 6 and 9 at the time , woke me up saying that one of my fiddler crabs was in the kitty litter. now I knew that the kitty litter was on the other side of the house and that they must be wrong but I got up and went to take a look...what did I find? a very happy crag digging a hole in the kitty litter.

The only thing I can think of is that one of the cats found him and was tring to play with it and it got onto it's fur and rode around untill it found somewhere it wanted to be.

 

[jenBLKAROWANA]

My story of thing escaping ended in death...
We have a 92 corner with an archer, a couple of mono's and scats, and we also had a retro pinis poly. He was about 6 or 7" and he was very active. One night we heard lots of splashing around, thought it was just the scats playing around, well, a few days went by, and I was looking in the tank while feeding them, and I could not see the retro...He was usually right up at the surface trying to get the food I had just dropped in...Well, I looked around at the back of the tank, and there he was on the carpet...dead...I was soo upset that we had lost him, I did not know if we would ever find another one like it...But to my amazment, my Boyfriend went to the LFS and found one for me! I was soo happy! We now have a better "secure" top on the tank!
Jen

 

[guppy]

You know they use electro shock to modify behavior in humans.

I keep a lot of tanks and my stories are of things escaping...

One sunday afternoon I was taking a nap and my kids , 6 and 9 at the time , woke me up saying that one of my fiddler crabs was in the kitty litter. now I knew that the kitty litter was on the other side of the house and that they must be wrong but I got up and went to take a look...what did I find? a very happy crag digging a hole in the kitty litter.

The only thing I can think of is that one of the cats found him and was tring to play with it and it got onto it's fur and rode around untill it found somewhere it wanted to be.

I have mentioned this in past threads but is funny enough to bear repeating. at one time I had a fair size community tank set up in the living room against some heavy curtains. The tank had a thick mat of elodea floating on the surface in which several 1" fw crabs made their home, at night the crabs would go exploring the house. I found this out one night when I saw something dark creeping across the curtain. Thinking it was a bug I went over to swat it and it ran back to the tank and jumped in. they wandered all over the living room at night as long as I had the tank and I never lost any of them. I thought it was pretty cool.

 

[DeLgAdO]

I have mentioned this in past threads but is funny enough to bear repeating. at one time I had a fair size community tank set up in the living room against some heavy curtains. The tank had a thick mat of elodea floating on the surface in which several 1" fw crabs made their home, at night the crabs would go exploring the house. I found this out one night when I saw something dark creeping across the curtain. Thinking it was a bug I went over to swat it and it ran back to the tank and jumped in. they wandered all over the living room at night as long as I had the tank and I never lost any of them. I thought it was pretty cool.

KOOL!!! what ever happened to em?? still got em??

 

[guppy]

No, I sold the tank when I moved, I have had bad experiences moving tanks so I just start over. I don't even Know what type of crab they were except that they were not fiddler, they were from indochina area and were mainly dark reddish brown with tan legs and claws, they were only about an inch across and ate flake food, elodea, and detritus from out of my powerfilters ( I couldn't keep them out of one, it had a warped top) If I didn't see them during the daytime I would look in the filter and they would all be sitting on top of the sponge munching on scum and would all start waving their little claws at me.

 

[Miles]

That monster Oscar is still with me today. He's almost 14 inches long and appears very healthy. The weird part is he seems to have lost all of his aggression that night. Since that evening he won't eat live food... I had to switch to a 100% pellet diet, which he makes me toss directly into his mouth. Over the years he's upgraded his quarters and now resides in a beautiful 125-gallon "community" tank (the heater, which he never trusted again, is now in the sump). His tank mates include mollies, angles, danio, and a school of 20 neon tetras that he shows no interest in. I think he got lobotomized!!!!![/COLOR][/SIZE]

I had a green terror that jumped out of the tank in the middle of the night. When I found him at 6am, he was all dried up and covered in cat hair. I threw him back in the tank, hoping he would survive since he was still breathing. I manually ran his body through the water, and held him upright in the flow of the filtration to get some water running through his gills. Then one second, woosh he took off like a rocket into some caves.

He soon healed up, but I noticed he wasn't the same. He OBVIOUSLY had Brain Damage. He would not eat feeders anymore.. He could not hang with other cichlids (Used to be king of the tank..) .. Would not be aggressive what-so-ever to ANYthing.. and he would get out-competed for pellets by my pleco! He would swim aimlessly, and sometimes bump into things.. Kind of like he was daydreaming and not paying attention. He was an autistic green terror. The poor guy eventually passed away when I was trying to put him in with some Kribs. The kribs beat him up, Crazy huh?

Traumatic issues with fish can definately cause an alteration in their behavior! That's for sure!

 

[sandtiger]

I was an aquaculture major in college and at the college there was a fish hatchery where we took some classes and had to maintain the place for grades. It was during this time that I truely fell in love with cichlids...specifically tilapia...more specifically...Nile tilapia. These guys are hard core!!! I have sooo many stories about them. I remember one time I went down early in the morning to check on things and found three tilapia laying on the floor...the floor is cement and it was the dead of winter on the NY snow belt. Their eyes were glazed over and they were stiff. I almost threw them out but decided to put them in the re-circ box instead. Instintly they started swiming around as if just woken up from a sleep or something. I even had a hard time catching them to put them back in the tank! There are many other stories as well...many times heaters broke and these fish survived extream heat and extream cold without any individual dieing from it. I actually think someone was trying to kill these fish off but I won't get into that. As for the trout...also got a lot of interesting stories. I remember once while moving trout from a tank to a pond (again...dead of winter) some managed to fall outta the nets...they were only small trout...fingerlings. Evetually we saw a bunch laying in the snow. I thought these were dead for sure being in the snow and stiff but like the tilapia...they lived. Gotta love fish.

 

[sandtiger]

Thought I'd share one of my most memorable cichlid experiences and see if anyone else had a story to share.

Several years ago, I purchased my first cichlid... an Oscar. One night I woke up to the sounds of violent splashing and what appeared to be lights flashing in my tank. My Oscar had smashed the glass heater and was being electrocuted in his tank. What a show!!! I jumped out of bed and yanked all the plugs from the wall, sure that my big beautiful Oscar would slowly rise to the surface belly-up. Such was not the case; he was a bit lethargic but he was very much alive. I cleaned up the mess and went to back to bed hoping he'd survive the night. Again to my surprise, he did. The next day, I purchased a new heater and some feeder guppies. He had no interest in the guppies and completely avoided the heater.

That monster Oscar is still with me today. He's almost 14 inches long and appears very healthy. The weird part is he seems to have lost all of his aggression that night. Since that evening he won't eat live food... I had to switch to a 100% pellet diet, which he makes me toss directly into his mouth. Over the years he's upgraded his quarters and now resides in a beautiful 125-gallon "community" tank (the heater, which he never trusted again, is now in the sump). His tank mates include mollies, angles, danio, and a school of 20 neon tetras that he shows no interest in. I think he got lobotomized!!!!!

I actually knew a guy who's oscar would not eat feeders because at one time he tried to feed it a baby bass and it got stung in the mouth....never ate a fish again.