Anybody keep fish

[Joe Sull]

Meet the children. Tiger Oscars with unusual coloring.
These are about 4 months old. I've had them for 3 months. I bought then as "medium" size which is a little less than half the size they are now. They'll get about 4 times bigger.
I haven't kept a tank for years but I talked the wife into it a couple of years ago and I thought I'd keep her happy with it by keeping little fish she likes. We had close to 40 at one point. Little one inch jobs, but she complained that they had no color. My turn! I gave away 20 fish that would be food for these Oscars and kept the larger fish for there amusement. After a while they just take over the tank. It's not much work, about an hour every 2 week to keep the water clean. I make my own filters and that makes it a lot cheaper.
The Oscars actually have a brain and their pretty amusing.
The smaller one was trying to sleep the other day. It lay on the bottom, almost on it's side and the other one wouldn't leave him alone. He'd suck the pebbles out from underneath the sleeping one and spit them out. The sleeping one would snap and then lay back down. This went on for 20 minutes before the sleeping fish finally gave up.

Cheers joe.

[FJmonkey]

Sounds like some members here, shit stirring bastards!!! I need my beauty sleep..

[FJ1100mjk]

Nice fish.

I had a small fresh water aquarium for years, filled with a good number and varieties of fish. I had a couple of larger Silver Dollars in it too. I dismantled it and gave the fish to good homes when I moved out of state. I missed it. Think about getting into it again. The fish are fun (and relaxing) to watch. Better than the idiot box

[movenon]

Sounds like some members here, shit stirring bastards!!! I need my beauty sleep..

+1 
George

[mst3kguy]

i've had aquariums on and off for about 35 years.  by far my favorite fish has been a black ghost.  very cool.

[FJscott]

I had a small mouth bass in a 100gal aquarium for almost a year. A long long time ago I used to play softball in a men's tavern league. We were playing in a round robin tourney one weekend and at this ball field complex
There was a couple ponds. Like all good rednecks I had a fishing pole in my truck so in between games I went fishing. I caught this smallmouth bass, threw him in the beer cooler and told him if he lived I'd give him a good
Home, if he died I'd feed him to my dog. The flipping fish lived so I put him in the aquarium and filled it with a garden hose. He (or she) was the coolest pet. Me and my buddies would get drunk and feed him all kinds of crazy critters we could find out in the woods. Insects, crickets, worms, frogs, toads, small mouse and when we couldn't find something alive we would cut sliced bologna into S shaped Oscar Meyer worms. This fish was ferocious.  When I moved almost a year later I returned him to the pond, much fatter.

Scott

[Joe Sull]

i've had aquariums on and off for about 35 years.  by far my favorite fish has been a black ghost.  very cool.

That must be an expensive one. I have'nt seen one of those for sale around here. I'll have to look around.

I want to get two black convect cichlid next.



Another funny story about bass

I do underwater construction, a lot of welding and burning. Bass love to watch a good arc. I'll strike and arc and there thier. They move in close, like 3" away, and stare at it till the rods gone. They'll swim away then as soon as I start another arc they all come back again. If I'm working with shiney bolts and nuts, the bigger bass will snap them out of your fingers, bite on them a little and spit them out.

[FJscott]

I learned a lot about bass behavior after having one in a tank. they are fearless, ferocious and gluttonous. when it was feeding time he would lite up like a xmas tree, bright green and black marble, his lateral line would be dark, dark black. we would put a bag of 1/2 dozen feeder goldfish on the clear plexiglass cover of the tank and this bass would rocket up out of the water hitting the glass with his head repeatedly, until I would feel bad and put the goldfish in the tank. Then it was ON! he would hit all 6 fish and when he was full and couldn't swallow he would hold them in his mouth until he could. sometimes they would squirt out his gills and he would attack again instantly. They are hearty fish. when it was time to clean his tank I would just drain it until mt, he would flop around until I filled it back up
with the garden hose. no water chemistry, chemicals...nothing but tap water. he was some BADASS BASS. if there was any kind of fish fights I would bet on the bass.

[Dan Filetti]

Your pet bass sounds like a grouper I kept in a 270 gal salt tank.  There were lots of fish in that tank, angels, parrot fish, tangs, lion fish, lots more...  But the baddest motherfucker in that tank was that grouper.

These fish were cool.  I could actually pet a few of them, they'd even come up to the surface and stay there, seemingly to be pet.  I often fed them frozen brine shrimp by hand, that is, I would hold it and they would feed right out of my hand as it melted.  The grouper was a bastard, he would, unless I held firmly to the clump of brine shrimp, snatch the entire clump and swallow the whole thing solid, still frozen!  Swallowing what amounted to an ice cube, never seemed to phase him.  All of the other fish in the tank were required to be too big to fit in it's mouth or they were summarily diss-appeared.  It was clear that, although smaller, this fish was the alpha.  All of the other fish, even though much bigger, would defer to the grouper in terms of physical space and feeding.

One day, I was hand feeding the fish and the grouper came up and attempted to swallow the entire block and part of my finger along with it.  I reached in with my other hand to push this aggressive fish off, and I guess it saw my approaching fingers as food, as it immediately let go of the shrimp, and engulfed one of my fingers. This started me, so I quickly drew my hand up out of the water, and with it, the grouper.  He flung off my quickly-moving hand, arcing up and over my head, and onto the hardwood floor behind me.  Roughly a seven foot drop.

I was sure this would finally do this fish in, but I instinctively reached down, scooped up the fish in both hands and dropped him gently into the water.  I was expecting a upside down floater, or at least a stunned fish.  I was shocked however, when that bastard, without hesitation, made a b-line for the floating hunk of brine shrimp and swallowed it whole!  This was, like your bass Scott, a bad ass grouper.



Dan    

[Joe Sull]

Great story. The same thing happened to a friend of mine except it was his brothers pet alligator. He was jiggling his keys in front of it and it latched on to the key and his fingers. My friend was so startled, he can off the groung a foot. The alagator shot across the room. That thing was mad as a hornet when it landed. Funny stuff, man.