Insane in the membrane

**joefixit2** · 04-30-2010, 04:00 AM

Okay, I have never really had fish as pets so how do you tell when a fish has gone crazy? Did he try to pull the toaster into the tank?

**Corey A.** · 04-30-2010, 12:25 PM

Dude. Why are you having so much trouble? I have a 125 gal salt & 45 gal fresh. I have some fish in my tanks going on 8 years now. You really need to go to a 'fish' place & not some box store like Pet Smart or Pet Co. They have no clue what there talking about. What kind of fish are we talking here? Tetras? Barbs? Cichlids? Guppies?

**joefixit2** · 04-30-2010, 04:14 PM

Maybe he accidently got piranhas.

**Horn** · 04-30-2010, 11:42 PM

Its a fresh water tank, and I got it from a real pet store, but the proprietors were no help the first time around. On my first attempt, I unknowingly used tap water, and all the fish croaked in one evening. I had to tell the kids they were "sleeping". The 2nd time around, I used RO water and let the tank cycle for about two weeks. I put in 3 fish: a neon fish (Mr. Chuckles), a slender looking yellow fish (Rocky), and a streamlined pink fish (Princess Sleeping Beauty). Mr. Chuckles didn't seem like he was eating much... and by the time I got to Calgary, the wife called me to say that Mr. Chuckles had been "bitten in half below the waist". Anyway, by the time I got back, there was nothing left. They ate the head, they ate the tail, they ate the whole damn thing. At this point I was watching over the 2 remaining fish carefully, and realized Rocky was looking positively insane. A strange grimace seemed to contort his features. It was...unnatural. Later that night, his eyes glazed over black.... like a doll's eyes, and he just bobbed up and down in the dark corner of the tank, staring at me from afar. I'm pretty sure he had gone quite mad contemplating his cannibalism, and the next day Rocky was found flippers-up...murdered by his own guilty conscience I suppose. So now, I am left with only Princess Sleeping Beauty. She is doing well now that the others are gone. pH is at 7.2 or so. She's got the joint all to herself.

**joefixit2** · 05-01-2010, 03:49 AM

Hmmmmm.....so at the end of the day, the girl fish gets the tank all to herself. Yeah, that doesn't sound too suspicious at all. I would get Rocky checked to arsenic or lead poisoning. I think Princess Sleeping Beauty had a master plan since the beginning. Oh yes, the tank would be all hers, all hers.

**joefixit2** · 05-01-2010, 04:43 PM

You can try what we did. We took a large plastic plant pot and coated it so that it would not leak. Then we took some river rocks in the bottom and a basic filter pump from a pet store. It is located on our back porch and has had three gold fish in it for the past three years and they have survived just fine. When the water gets low, we just put in regular tap water and they don't have any issues with it. Some basic water plants so they have somewhere to hide. My youngest (8 yrs old) loves to go out and feed them, the fish actually come to the top when they see us. And before you ask, the wood is in there because we also have a few tadpoles from a local pond that are close to turning into frogs.

**Horn** · 05-05-2010, 12:05 AM

This is not helping me Joe.

Anyway... Princess Sleeping Beauty has managed to live out the week. That's a start....

**joefixit2** · 05-05-2010, 11:53 AM

Sorry but if it helps, we did have three minnows in there also that we caught at the creek and a raccoon ate them one night. Apparently the minnows were not as smart as the gold fish to go to the bottom to stay safe.