Internal screaming... today sucks

[klawfran3]

today I was doing a water change on my nano aquarium which contains a few N class endlers (which I take a lot of pride in) and cherry shrimp. Well as I was in the bathroom filling up the bucket to pour back in to the tank, apparently one of my most gravid female endlers got spooked and jumped straight out of the tank. This wouldn't have been so bad as they can go a while without water and putting her back in the minute I was gone would have kept her alive, but I walked in to the room of the tank just in time to see my dog walk over and eat it. Bye bye endler, you were a few days from giving birth too.

I can't believe this happened. One stinking minute and I lost $50 worth of fish. The dog is sitting in the corner with the guiltiest look on her face because I just KNOW she knows she messed up. Why me? :cry:

 

[Biollantefan54]

I suck with fish, I looked that up, they look badass. Sorry about your fish!

 

[Entomancer]

I suck with fish, I looked that up, they look badass. Sorry about your fish!

There are so many people here who seem to think this to be the case...I don't get it.

Fish are actually very easy to care for, but you really need to know some of the chemistry behind what makes aquatic ecosystems function (even more so if you're looking at marine fish/inverts/corals). The other thing is that having a really good local aquarium shop makes a huge difference in success or failure. This is especially true when it comes to biosecurity; I can tell you from working for PetStupid for three years that a minimal effort is put into keeping disease and parasites out of the sale tanks. What's worse is that employees are given zero training in identifying fish parasites or diseases, so I would spot parasitic infestations before they spread, but there was one time where somebody completely missed one that wiped out dozens and dozens of fish.

But hey, we still sold a lot of fish that day, right?!

That store must have distributed hundreds of ichtyophthirius cysts and larvae that week.

I eventually was fired because I made the managers insecure (I was the only one in the store with more neurons than fingers and toes, it seemed) and because I was saving people too much money.

On that note, I guess I am biased, because I live about an hour away from what has to be one of the greatest aquarium shops in the entire country.

I guess a good way to put it is that there is a very steep learning curve with fish; some of this can be overcome more easily by starting with understocked tanks with hardier species, and spending the money on a decent liquid water chemistry kit; the tests from the more expensive kit are more accurate, and can illustrate the chemistry of aquariums in enlightening ways.

On topic; I'm very sorry for your loss, klawfran. Reminds me of the time that I bought some clown killies and left the lid off during a bit of regular maintenance work...killies are very good at jumping. @__@

 

[The Snark]

Re: Entomancer and marketing fish. What you have posted sounds about right but a few things additionally m\need to be taken into account. As a college student I held off starvation for a few months by working on a fish farm. We aren't talking animal husbandry here. A pure commercial venture dealing with objects often sold by weight. Health measures were so generalized, as in most factory production operations, that looking at the paperwork it was difficult to tell you were even dealing with live animals.

One of several incidents come to mind. One of my jobs first thing in the AM was a die off check. Scoop the dead bodies out of the accumulators and weigh them. We had a gradient scale we operated with. The raceway originally started with 640,000 fish from an order of 500,000 with extras for expected die off from stress. The die off chart found <1500 grams die off per day acceptable, 1,500 to 2,500 the raceway required 4 additional water monitorings per day. And on up to 5kg where we had a diseased raceway.
So one day I scooped about 8kg of dead out. Send them off to the lab, lower the temp and treat the water with calcium carbonate to drastically lower nitrogen. Lab report came back with Hexamitiasis. So we did a survey. About 80% were of marketable size. Running the various charts the big cheeses decided they wanted 90% before market. So we sterilized a spare raceway as we started the fish on a heavy dose of tetracycline. Then a week into the antibiotic treatments we transferred the fish through a cleansing bath into the new race way. We got lucky and only had 8% die off from stress which was just fine. Fine tuned the water temperature for maximum growth, increased DO for same and added the Calcium Carbonate filter/injection. Much more expensive operation but they were shooting at getting the fish marketed as fast as possible.
So the Hexamita in check, the fish running on ideal water conditions, the entire raceway got dumped onto the market. The owners got their 90%, and the retailers got prestressed chemicalized fish, most of which were doomed to die if not kept in ideal water conditions. The smart savvy buyers knew this and pet stores had a sudden sale on that variety so they could die in the end owners tanks and the profits were maintained. Yeay $$$$!!

Back on the subject, sorry for your loss OP. I hope you remonstrated the dog. Bath maybe? Make it eat fish offal until it barfs when it so much as smells fish?

 

[klawfran3]

Back on the subject, sorry for your loss OP. I hope you remonstrated the dog. Bath maybe? Make it eat fish offal until it barfs when it so much as smells fish?

you ALWAYS have the best stories to tell Snark. Write a book for me please haha.

"Coleslaw" got a stern talking to and a nice well-hated shower. I figure why not make her clean from her sin AND her outside play time. two birds one stone.