What is the most random, strangest, weirdest, bizarre thing that has happened to you with regards to your aquarium/plant/fish keeping hobby?
For me it would be when we first moved to Florida. We were renting a condo at the time and my kids were out playing with a group of kids from the neighborhood and they came bursting through the door shouting and frantic. They were holding a fairly large pleco and saying it was flopping on the ground in an alley and wanted to know if I could save it. I tossed him in one of my tanks figuring the poor thing was done for not knowing how long he'd been out of water. It survived!!!! He was far too large for my tanks but after he had some time to recover, I took him to an LFS where he joined their pond fish and thrived there.
For me it was when I got my first metal halide lights for my reef system. At the time, this was a new lighting method, and a fixture for an aquarium with two 150w bulbs was over $1000. I looked around and found an inexpensive "shop light" MH fixture that had one 175w bulb, and a pair of them was only about half the price of a fixture.
I bough the fixtures at a local store that sold things for Hydroponics. I told them what I wanted, then the started to write up the receipt. They asked for my name and I told them. Then they said "We just need your first name"
At that point I realized that most of their customers were using hydroponics to grow those sort of plants that the DEA takes in interest in if you possess.
lol We have one hydroponics shop in town and I went in there looking for anything I could use on my tanks and noticed the same thing. Everything in there was for growing pot. I asked them if they could order some things I was interested in and they were confused that what I needed wasn't already in stock. They tried to convince me that they had everything I could possibly need.
My weirdest experience was my bichir I had when I was a kid. We bought it at 2 inches and within a year it was over 2 feet long and still living in a ten gallon. It had eaten every other fish in the tank. One day it disappeared and we couldn't find it anywhere. A month later my parents were moving the chest freezer in the basement and my bichir was just curled up in the drip pan under the freezer. Somehow it had made it down 2 stories to the basement and decided an inch of stale water in a dirty pan was its new home. I wonder if it was eating mice or something.
My weirdest experience was with a reef tank. After adding some live rock I slowly started losing some of my fish and shrimp. This was really frustrating. I had some bristle worms in the tank....but nothing too big. For a couple of nights I had noticed a loud popping sound. Every time I went to go investigate I found nothing. I thought one of my power heads were failing. The next day....my cleaner shrimp was half eaten. The next night I armed myself with a flashlight and a chair to wait out the popping sound. After about two hours the sound happened. It popped several times before I could pinpoint where it was coming from. I shined my light down a little hole in the rock to find a couple of alien eyes looking back at me. It was a pistol shrimp! I had to break open the rock to terminate it's existence! the pistol shrimp has a very powerful strike. It's been known to break glass!
my god... i have always wanted to own one, to the point of setting up a tank just for that shrimp, its fascinating the power it has in its claw, just saw a youtube clip about it.....
For me it was with my SW tank. I had a bad outbreak of apitasia. A good way of killing them is to inject them with boiling vinegar. So I went to my local pharmacy to get a needle. Ever try to explain that you need a hypodermic needle for your fish tank to a pharmacist? They all though I was on drugs and gave me a bunch of pamphlets about what "using" can do to you.
Mine was also with SW. I had 90lbs of rock shipped overnight from Fiji (or LA). I picked it up at the airport, rushed it home and put it in the cycling tub. After a few weeks of die off and reset I moved the rock to the tank. Once in my display, out came a damselfish. IDK how he made it wrapped in wet newspaper but somehow, he did.
My wife and I went to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga about 10 years ago. They offered a "backstage pass" which allowed you a behind the scenes tour of the aquarium. I think it was about $20 and worth every penny.
We meet up with the group who I mistakingly assumed would include some aquarium hobbyist. Boy, was I wrong. Id love to go through the whole tour, but your looking for a funny. So...
The first instance was in the "food prep" area where they make all the fish goodies. There were tables of squid, shrimp, veggies and feeder fish. The guide was showing me how they grind stuff up to make these meat pellets when I suddenly felt alone. I turned around to notice only the tour guide and I were in the room. Everyone else was outside the door peeking through the window and holding their noses. I never noticed the smell....
Later, we were in an open area that had a large pond inside an aviary. They had just cleaned the pond and there was about 6 bus-tubs of duckweed. I am a duckweed fan so I asked if I could have some of it if they were going to toss it out. With permission, I was collecting my souvenirs but I didn't remember that duckweed looks like slime from afar to those who do not know what it is. I could here "God, he is gross" from one of the female visitors and I cold see from my wife's face that she was getting embarrassed.
A week after adding some new yoyo loaches to a tank I was looking for my oldest, largest one and couldn't find it. This tank is in my youngest brother's room and I had assumed that it died and he didn't want to tell me about it. When he came home from school I asked him about it and he swore that it didn't, and was a little upset I didn't believe him. So we dismantled the filter, moved out all the moss balls and drift wood, the terra cotta pot, pipes, etc. Nothing.
A couple months later we moved into a larger tank, but chose a new, sandier substrate. After it cycled we added in the fish, replanted everything, moved over the filter, etc. A week or so after the new set up/transfer I went in to dose ferts and who should I find but the old missing yo yo loach. To this day it still pisses me off that I could not and probably never will figure out where it was hiding or how we moved it from the old tank to the new one without noticing.
I have found MTS in a new tank that was setup with old substrate that had been setting out and dry (to my sight and tough) for almost a year. Resilient little guys!
i used to have a 6" cae in a ten gallon. ate algae like crazy, but then one day, it was gone. vanished. i have taken the tank down many times since then, moved the dresesr and stand, and everything..... havent seen a trace of him... really weird!! just gone all of a sudden lol
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