# Fish-Keeping Horror Stories



## christinamac (Jan 2, 2016)

Fish-keeping is a learning process, and many mistakes are made along the way. What are some of your own mistakes and horror stories? What are some of the craziest mistakes and horror stories you've heard of? I'll go ahead and share one of my stories.

Bug-Bombed Crayfish
Growing up, my sister had a room full of fish tanks in our house. She was really into crayfish for awhile, and had one that was very dear to her. That room developed a bug problem at one point--spiders, roaches, gnats and so on were somehow finding a way in. My parents decided to bug-bomb the room, to take care of all the bugs. My sister walked in about 5-10 minutes later to do some routine care on her fish tanks. She noticed that her crayfish was stumbling around, disoriented, and clearly in pain. In a panic she thought to herself "What's happening?! What could cause this? Oh no...bug bomb...crayfish are related to lobsters....lobsters are related to cockroaches...crayfish are susceptible to insecticides...the bug bomb stuff in the air made it into the water and my crayfish is dying from a neuro-toxin!" 

She ran to my Mom, begging for help. Thinking quick, Mom said "We need to dilute the poison, help him flush it out." Mom immediately started running clean tap water that was close to the temperature of the aquarium water over the crayfish, making sure it was running through his gills. Meanwhile, my sister prepared a temporary "aquarium" with an airstone and clean dechlorinated water. After a few minutes the crayfish's movements started to improve while under the running water. He was transferred to the temporary aquarium and partial water changes were performed about every 30 minutes until the crayfish seemed like he was going to be alright. Extra partial water changes were performed over the next couple of days for good measure. That crayfish fully recovered and lived for another year or two!


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## Witchipoo (Dec 13, 2015)

Years ago I lived in Tennessee, my next door neighbor had a tank with 4 red bellied piranhas, one by one they died off, except for one. Fast forward about a year my neighbor was moving, his last red belly was about 2 inches across. He moved his tank last and we watched him drive away. He showed up at my door about 2 hours later in a panic, he had put his fish in a large mason jar and sealed it! 
The poor thing was laying in the bottom of the jar all but dead. 
I grabbed a straw, opened the jar and blew bubbles directly in its gills, it perked up, came upright and bit the end of the Straw off!


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## Olivia27 (Nov 26, 2015)

I think the sheer fact that your neighbor owns a piranha is enough of a horror story in and of itself  how is that even legal?

I think I've shared this story already.. But it's still one of the craziest I've ever heard. Anyway, my mom's friend has a koi pond. She hired a teen to clean it up. Not long later she walked out the door to find the teen giving each one of the koi a proper bath - shampoo, rinse and towel and all. Needless to say the entire pond died. I still have no idea how in the freaking world does that teen equate cleaning a pond to bathing a fish, but no story speaks clearer the importance of direct communication, I suppose O_O


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## Witchipoo (Dec 13, 2015)

This was 30 years ago. You could buy pihrana in pet stores that were less than the size of a silver dollar. I don't know if you still can, but they really aren't much different than Oscars. They're really kind of pretty, prefer to live in schools and his never tried to bite him, he always had feeder fish and kept them well fed.


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## BettaStarter24 (Mar 24, 2014)

You can still get Pihranas. There's a lps by my school that sells them. 

I once thought my goldfish looked dirty and would enjoy a bubble bath. So I netted him out, and released him in my hot bubble bath. Once I figured he was clean I put him back in the tank. He died shortly after. That was the tank where we had a fantail goldfish, a koi, a Betta a frog a pleco and I think some tetras.


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## Baxter35 (Jan 23, 2016)

These are good stories! Many years ago I lived in an apartment. I had a gourami for the kitten to watch. The kitten was on top of the tank, managed to break the lid, fall in the tank, and escape unscathed. Tank was a mess and required a tear down, with the gourami ending up in a bowl. After cleaning, I picked up the bowl and dropped it into the sink. The fish flopped down the garbage disposal. I couldn't get the thing apart, nor get to the fish. It didn't end well.


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## OUOhYeah2016 (Dec 9, 2015)

My boyfriend was caring for my betta Fawkes over my winter break and was doing a water change when he jumped from his cup and into the garbage disposal! My boyfriend reached in and found him and he's still doing really well, but that was one of those things I heard about after the fact and was not happy with my boyfriend about!


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## Witchipoo (Dec 13, 2015)

*shudder*
Fish and garbage disposals!


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## VanessaPinTN (Jan 11, 2016)

The best investment I ever made was a stainless steel sink strainer. We have one on both sides of our kitchen sink and I bought one for my best friend's sink because I was terrified I was going to drop silverware down in the disposal when doing dishes. Definitely worth the $7-$8.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk


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## LittleBettaFish (Oct 2, 2010)

There was a newly discovered species of wild betta that I managed to get my hands on. They were not only expensive, but I believe I was the first person in Australia to keep and successfully breed this species. 

I ended up with a group of about a dozen fish, which consisted of the original pair and their sub-adult/adult offspring. 

I _really_ loved these fish, especially the original pair. 

Unfortunately, a lapse in proper quarantine procedures led to them getting sick with velvet. I've had plenty of experience with velvet (this group of wild bettas seems particularly susceptible) and I used a medication that I have used successfully many times before. 

Tragically, this time I made a mistake when calculating the dosage and when I next looked in the tank (it had a blanket over it to keep it dark), it was to find the majority of the fish dead, and the rest in the midst of dying. 

I did manage to save the original female and a few of her offspring, but they died not long after. I think the effects of the poisoning coupled with the stress of a heavy velvet infection was just too much. 

I seriously sat on the floor of my fish room and was bawling my eyes out over these fish.

Since then I am always extremely careful when dosing this same medication, and I will monitor the tank and the fish very closely in the initial hours after the medication has been added to make sure there are no adverse effects. 

I still feel a twinge of sadness every time I go back in my journal and see photos of this group. I did end up with three more pairs of this species and they produced plenty of fry, but I'm just not as attached to any of them like I was with my original pair.


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## Witchipoo (Dec 13, 2015)

LittleBettaFish said:


> There was a newly discovered species of wild betta that I managed to get my hands on. They were not only expensive, but I believe I was the first person in Australia to keep and successfully breed this species.
> 
> I ended up with a group of about a dozen fish, which consisted of the original pair and their sub-adult/adult offspring.
> 
> ...


Awww, so sad. Have a Witch hug {{{Littlebettafish}}}


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## blackjack (Jul 19, 2015)

To some degree I know how you feel. He wasn't a rare type or anything like that, just a Petsmart buy. Despite only having him a couple months, I LOVED Phantom. I was so upset over his death I just stood there in disbelief and honestly feeling depressed about it. I'd lost a couple before him, but none affected me like him.


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## Aqua Aurora (Oct 4, 2013)

As a child my mother liked to use me as an excuse to do/try things/go places a kid would go that SHE wanted to go (and I did not) this included quite a few movie theater adventures that I loudly voiced my distaste for every time she tried to say "I'm taking my daughter, she wants to see it.""NO I DON'T!!" "SHH!".. Anyways I digress.. My mom decided to get an aquarium and say it was mine/for me but she controlled everything. It had the typical obnoxious rainbow barf gravel, and random non nonsensical decor items, etc. Like most people who do no research she filled it, dropped in the packet of magic water conditioner let the tank sit a week then bought a goldfish to put in to "see if the tank is cycled"...2-3 days it wasn't dead (also wasn't fed), my om decided tank was cycled and bought fish-we came home with 6+ dalmatian mollies (mom wanted mollies I got to choose dalmatian because I liked dog) and a common pleco in the morning then went out for the day and came home after dinner. By then the goldfish had DESTROYED all the mollies (chucks of fish everywhere-all dead or dieing) and was harassing the pleco.  I freaked out, my parents didn't care, netted the corpse parts and flushed them (DO NOT flush fish btw-bad for eco system). I stared at the pleco while my parents watched a movie that night, it was dieing and the goldfish wouldn't leave it be so I got a bowl and put the pleco and some of the tank water in there to keep it away from the goldfish.. it died within a half hour, I cried. I was so mad (and member a child) I netted the still live and extremely FAT goldfish and flushed it.
Incidentally because of this when I got into tank keep many years later I decided to keep a pleco to prove I could keep one alive.. I'll write up the story of that Antone time.
I used the same tank a few weeks later when some tree fogs laid eggs in the kiddie pool on our back deck. My dad went to drain it and I cupped out 3-5 cups with newly hatched tadpoles while he was draining and set up the tank with sticks and bugs and what not (i honestly think the tadpoles mostly survives on cannibalism).. Manged to raise 5 young frogs from there that were released when they had grown into frogs and had lost their tails.



My niece got a 10g tank kit a few years ago set it up, fake bs cycle again and got 10 neon tetra. Fast forward several weeks with an grossly over fed tank, lights on 24/7 (was her 'night light' and she was to lazy to turn off during day), and its an algae nightmare. Try getting a nerite snail to clean up algae (btw nitrites don't eat the type of algae she has-green water and extreme hair algae completely covering the glass). Not even in a day and the neons manged to kill and eat it. Next she bought a (1) cory (not an algae eater at all btw) it hid in some decor item and never came out-suspected dead. I tried several times to get her or her parents to get her to properly take care of the tank-water changes, cut back on food, turn off the light .. no go.. Somehow in all this hellishness of a tank the neons bred insanely fast and one visit I opened the lid to have the surface completely cover in tetra-a wriggling mass eager for food-it was easily 100 neons!!! The newest generation were murky/dull but the original bought batch were still normal color, they mutated in their nasty environment.. Tried getting her to reduce fish number and take care of tank.. still nothing done.. .. Fast forward Antone month or 2 and she "got tired" of the tank so she shut off the light, stopped feeding and let the fish all just starve and die... btw this tank was on a dresser next to her bed.. dunno how she could sleep next to starving and dieing fish!!!
Ugh... but after all that next time I visited the parents mentioned she was "done with the tank" and offered it to me. I didn't expect it to still have water (with rotting fish) but I took it and cleaned the [censor] out of it (not exaggerating must have used a 1/2 bottle of bleach on that) and that started my adventure into serious fish keeping.
I refuse to keep neon tetra after seeing the mass in my niece's tank.. so disturbing..


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## blackjack (Jul 19, 2015)

Oh my god! That is sick. I will never understand the cruelty of people. When it comes to fish, so many people don't even see it as cruel. She let them just starve to death and didn't see anything wrong with that?


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## Aqua Aurora (Oct 4, 2013)

blackjack said:


> Oh my god! That is sick. I will never understand the cruelty of people. When it comes to fish, so many people don't even see it as cruel. She let them just starve to death and didn't see anything wrong with that?


She's a messed up person.. unfazed by letting so many tetra starve and die next to her bed, then a year later when she tried keeping betta after that failed (twice) she gave me her marimo ball because she was "scared of it"... Seriously? What is wrong with her? I have no freaking idea..


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## Tuck2012 (Mar 18, 2015)

Many years ago I killed a goldfish by trying to be kind but obviously got it very wrong.

A work college of my mothers asked us to look after her goldfish while she went away for a holiday. I was so excited about this but snowball the goldfish turned up in a plastic sweet jar and apparently this was his permanent home. I thought Snowball would enjoy more swimming room while with us so partly filled our tin bath in the wash house ( yes I am showing my age here!!) and put Snowball in for a good old swim. Sadly Snowball didn`t enjoy his new found freedom for long he was dead the next day!! 

I was devastated poor Snowball and poor owner, despite being kept in a sweet jar she`d had him a number of years before I got my hands on him. 

It was decided he had probably died of old age although, despite the fact she`d had him a good few years, he wasn`t that big he fitted in a sweet jar for one thing so could hardly have been the twenty plus years goldfish are supposed to live to but anyway old age was the verdict but much more likely the tin bath had soap and cleaning agents stuck to its sides something as a young child I never even considered - Poor Snowball! all those years stuck in a sweet jar gets a bath full of water and some stupid child poisons him! 

I hope he at least enjoyed a few lengths before passing!


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## Witchipoo (Dec 13, 2015)

When my son, who is now 21, was 6 he won two goldfish at the county fair. They were just little comets. One was orange and the other was kind of copper colored. The copper one died the next day. Anyway, the Orange one went in an empty 10 gallon I had. He was with us until my son was 14, then one morning I found him literally cooked in the tank! The heater had malfunctioned in the night and the water temp was almost 250°! The poor thing, I felt so bad for him. I can't even remember his name.


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## christinamac (Jan 2, 2016)

I have so many "medical intervention" stories, lol.

Plecostomus Surgery
We had a large pleco for about 5 years or so. At some point, he developed what I suspect was swim bladder disease. It started with him having trouble swimming and finally he was stuck floating belly-up at the water surface with what seemed like a large air-filled bulge on his stomach. He was very much alive and would try and go back underwater, but he would always float back to the top. We knew that he was going to dry out and starve if we didn't do anything. We figured either 1) he's going to die naturally anyway or 2) he's going to die from what we are about to do to try and help. 

We carefully held him upside down in the water and with a tiny needle "popped" a little pin hole at the largest part of the bulge on his stomach. We gently pressed on the bulged area and air started bubbling out! We coated the little pin hole we made with a triple antibiotic ointment, and then let him swim free in his tank again. He was able to swim almost completely normal again within a few minutes and we could tell he felt so much better. We kept an eye on where we made the hole to make sure there were no signs of infection while he recovered. He quickly returned to full health and lived for a few more years without any complications. :-D


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## Olivia27 (Nov 26, 2015)

christinamac said:


> I have so many "medical intervention" stories, lol.
> 
> Plecostomus Surgery
> We had a large pleco for about 5 years or so. At some point, he developed what I suspect was swim bladder disease. It started with him having trouble swimming and finally he was stuck floating belly-up at the water surface with what seemed like a large air-filled bulge on his stomach. He was very much alive and would try and go back underwater, but he would always float back to the top. We knew that he was going to dry out and starve if we didn't do anything. We figured either 1) he's going to die naturally anyway or 2) he's going to die from what we are about to do to try and help.
> ...


I bet you already know anyway but that actually sounds more like GBD. No article I read recommended to pop the bubbles but hey ho I'm glad it worked out for you. 

My story: this is the 1960s. My dad won a goldfish from somewhere and brought it home in a plastic bag. He decided to build the fish a pond. So he started digging a hole in the yard, filled it up with a bucket of water and dumped the fish in. The next day the water disappeared and the fish is dead. That's how my dad learns that soil absorbs water.


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## christinamac (Jan 2, 2016)

Seren27 said:


> I bet you already know anyway but that actually sounds more like GBD. No article I read recommended to pop the bubbles but hey ho I'm glad it worked out for you.


I have never heard of Gas Bubble Disease. I'm glad to know about it now, and glad our non-conventional method worked. :lol:


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## Aquastar (Jul 17, 2015)

I never knew about hat either, but I bet one of my boys had it for a but. I wish I knew. So here's a few bloopers form me.

1. 
Taking in the class fish for the summer with his Fluval, he was huge so I felt bad for him in the little 2gal spec, and the filter intake was a bit too strong for him and he was very violent, but I didn't have anything better so I left the filter off as much as I could. So when I was setting up the tank I acclimated him and released him. I sat around watching him, and then after half an hour I realized what I'd forgotten: water conditioner. I panicked and dumped some in. I've forgotten water conditioner a few times, but luckily there is next to no chlorine or anything in our water, close save.

2.
I was going away for a week so I left my mom in charge of feeding, I told her 3 pellets a day for the bettas and a small pinch of flakes for the others, so I assumed they would be a bit hungry, but not too bad. I came bad and freaked out. There was diatoms everywhere and all the fish looked like they had dropsy. I looked into the breeder trap where I had left a baby guppy and there were at least 12 pellets. and more in the gravel. Apparently she had dropped those in by accident. Now how many must have made it to the main section? I had to fast for a whole week after a 90% water change. Mufasas belly was 1cm cubed at least. Just no. She also claimed they 'looked hungry'.


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