Posted by Sarah on July 28, 2009
So, how are your fish doing?
After our two week vacation, we came back and found a lot of our fish had disappeared.
We’d changed the water before we left, and someone came over to feed the fish every day, so I’m not really sure what happened.
We ended up with one discus fry left, about 5 or 6 german blue rams – and only one adult ram.
A couple of our harlequin rasboras, and our badis are also gone.
It was kind of disappointing to come home to so many missing fish, but I guess that’s what we get for going away.
How are your fish doing?
Do you make any special preparations before you leave for a week or two?
Posted by Sarah on July 14, 2009
No, I’m not really going to tell you how to stop a fish from growing, but this is one of the more disturbing topics that I saw in my stats, so I figured I’d cover it.
The short answer is you can’t stop a fish from growing, although if a fish is in a poor environment, whether it’s too small, has water that isn’t changed often enough, or is crowded, it may become stunted, and not grow to it’s full size.
This isn’t something that a good fish keeper would want for their fish – you basically aren’t providing the proper care for the fish, so it isn’t growing properly.
The only reasons that I can think of to stop a fish from growing are to keep it looking “cute” and to keep it small enough that it will be able to remain in an aquarium that is too small for it for longer than it should be in that tank.
Since the original searcher was searching for ways to keep a puffer from growing, there is the possibility that they could be trying to keep them small enough so that they wouldn’t want to eat their tank mates.
None of these is a good reason to abuse your fish, and I think that doing anything that hurts your fish and doesn’t let them grow properly, on purpose, is fish abuse.
Of course, this is one of the reasons that you should research your fish, and have a proper habitat for them before you buy them.
I know it’s hard, and I don’t always do it – but I’ve done enough research so that I have a general idea of what requirements the fish will need, and I know which people at the fish store to talk to if I have questions.
A lot of people do buy a bigger fish than their tank can handle, and plan to upgrade to a bigger tank when their fish needs it.
Unfortunately life can get in the way, so people can’t always get the upgraded tank when they need it.
That’s why it’s a good idea to plan – and buy in advance.
What are your thoughts on stopping fish from growing on purpose.
Do you think it’s ok, or is it fish abuse?
Are their any fish that you wish you could keep from growing?
It would be nice if I could press a button and stop some of the larger puffers from growing so that I could keep them in my aquariums, but I know it wouldn’t be healthy for them, so I’d never do that.
Posted by Sarah on June 30, 2009
Have you ever had a fish related accident?
Sunday morning I walked into the living room and saw a huge puddle of water on the floor.
I looked at the tanks in front of me, and they were all in one piece, there weren’t any spots from the roof, there weren’t any spilled or broken glasses on the floor, so I had no idea where the water was coming from.
I said “Jeff, I don’t know what happened in here but there’s water all over the floor.”
To tell you the truth I was getting a little scared – water on the floor is a problem, water on the floor when you can’t figure out where it came from is a bigger problem.
Of course Jeff knew what happened right away.
He’d left the RO filter running on the discus tank, and it had overflowed and ran into the middle of the floor instead of puddling near the tank.
It’s a good thing we’d just tiled the floor!
It’s also a good thing that the we have a wet vacuum.
Ours has really been invaluable to us since we started keeping fish.
Whether we are cleaning up overflows (yes, its happened more than once) or using it to clean water out of used tanks we’ve used that thing a lot.
One of our friends told us that his wife wouldn’t allow him to get an RO filter unless he got a wet vac first.
I think that’s a great idea.
After all, more than likely something’s going to happen, and it’s a lot less stressful to have a wet vac on hand than to try to clean everything up with towels, or to have to run out and buy one.
Have you ever had a fish tank or fish room accident?
Leave me a comment and tell me about it – or just tell me how lucky you’ve been, since you haven’t had one 
.
Posted by Sarah on June 24, 2009
After I wrote Do you tell your kids the fish is dead, a couple of people have found the site searching for “How do you tell your kids the fish is dead,” so I thought I should address that question.
How do you tell your kids the fish is dead?
Does the explanation differ according to the child’s age – or whether or not they are the ones who discovered the body.
I have to tell you, in our tank full of cories and bushynose plecos sometimes all we find is part of a skeleton, and then we have to determine which fish is dead by figuring out which one we don’t see anymore.
I think that might be a little more traumatic than seeing a fish that has just died.
I really haven’t thought about what or how I’m going to tell the baby when she’s old enough to start wondering what happened to the fish.
It’s something we’ll definitely have to think about though – with all of our fish now deaths and disappearances are going to be a part of life.
Of course there’s the chance she might not care or notice missing fish at all, but if she’s anything like her dad and me she’ll have at least one favorite.
How did you tell your kids the fish is dead?
Do you remember how your parents told you your fish had died when you were younger?
