Subject: fish that have gone rogue...

[Sk8r]

Fish that had to be gotten out of your tank.

Mine: 1. a ghost eel. Absolutely gorgeous. Guaranteed reef-safe. Hard to feed.
Ha! again ha! Mine had no trouble. He was a night hunter, that's all. Ate 300.00 worth of fish in the two weeks it took to catch him. "Guaranteed reef safe' does not mean safe with fishes. It means he won't eat your corals. He didn't. And he was extremely well-fed.

2. a tiger pistol shrimp. Killed my watchman goby and went on to kill several other fish before I unbuilt my reef to get him out. M.O.---a body blow producing a red spot on all the fatalities. Got him out. No more red spot deaths.

3. a scribbled rabbit. Grew. Got to where, at about 8", he was like a moving van trying to turn in an alley, re my rockwork. Being a rabbit, he was easily freaked and panicked, and would use that dorsal fin to force a right of way. Killed 2 fish before I got him out---another reef unbuild, this time with leather gloves under my rubber ones, because their defense is to plaster themselves to the underside of rocks, and their sting can produce necrosis of tissue, black rot in your hand, in other words, where they strike. Very nasty.

4. a yellow dottyback, or any dottyback: this is probably one of the canniest, hardest to catch fish ever. You try one trick to get him, miss---and he's on to that, and will never fall for it again. Ever. They learn. Instantly. They hide deep in the rockwork. It was another semi-unbuild until I could finally trap him in a corner, by inserting a barrier after he'd gone into it. Being the shape he is, he can get through a lot of tight spots. And he destroyed several fish, just attacked and attacked for no particular reason. Maybe he liked fins for dinner. But that fish was not hungry. He was just pugnacious and meaner than a junkyard dog.

 

[MarAquatic]

For me it was a banana wrasse, a lunar wrasse, and a fromosa wrasse. They are awesome but flip everything over that isn't glued and will eat your snails and shrimp. And I was not about to break down rocks so I used the smallest fishing hook I could find and snapped the barb off and baited it with shrimp and I caught them all

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[zheka757]

9'' naso tank.
2 chromis at diferent times.
1 anthias.
is going on overflow counts? cause i lost count how many fish actually got into my overflow.

 

[Sk8r]

It counts. Dartfish, firefish, various thin fishes can fit right through downflow slots. As maddening as jumpers---because the ride to my sump is 15 feet to a rough landing, so I just do not get dartfish.

 

[djryan2000]

Reminds me of the two times I had to catch my dottyback for a tank transfer. The first time, when the tank cracked and water was spilling out, he pretty much jumped into my net and was out. The second time, for a tank upgrade, it took almost 10 minutes to catch him even with only an inch of water left in the tank.

Guess I got really lucky the first time.


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[Sk8r]

I've had fish for decades and no problems catching what I need to catch---except one skinny red-stripe goby taht got into the sump. Finally got him into the pump chamber, with the whole system shut down to keep him out of the intake. Envision a 5"x 8" box full of water gone murky from previous chase through 2 other chambers. It took me an hour to finally come up with that rascal and return him to the upstairs tank, whence he had escaped down 15 feet of drain hose to the basement sump. The ability of some fish to evade the net is truly amazing.

 

[wsboyette]

I have read that Domino Damsels can be a real terror if they go rogue.

 

[Sk8r]

I had a golden domino, aka humbug, who reached about half a foot nose to tail. She was fine with other fishes until the blackout and the loss of some of her roommates. When I tried to slip in others, she went piscicidal. I finally had to give up and find her a home elsewhere. But she was gorgeous.