What's the worst thing you've seen a fish survive?

[musty baby]

My volitan lion, within a couple days of bringing it home from the LFS, turned absolutely white and sat on the bottom of the tank gasping for 2-3 days. Some of its fins and spines fell off. Then it colored back up, took off swimming, and lived a happy life with spines of all different lengths and some crazy looking fins.

 

[AEreefer]

i had a 1-2" piccaso trigger that was stuck under a rock for 3 weeks. went on to live a happy life.

 

[Matt Rise]

About 9 years ago, I was helping a friend out who was the owner of a LFS that I did business with. We would go to the airport to pick up his weekly shipments. Well, one Thursday in the middle of winter, the flight had been diverted to Baltimore, and his entire order had been sitting out in the snow. By the time he got the logistics handled, a few days had gone by...and when we finally got the styro boxes from the airport back to the shop, most of the bags had ice in them! True story, but if I remember correctly, only about 5% of the livestock perished.

 

[hot4teacher]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=3263755#post3263755 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Footbag
I once saw this clown fish named Nemo... He jumped into the toilet and ended up finding his father in the bay outside the dentists office .

Post of the month! OMFG!

 

[Skatereef]

When was like 6 I had a gold fish flop out of the water for 4+ hours. When I got home he was dry but I still put him back in to see if he would live.Walked back in hour later and was swimming around!!!!

 

[johnydart]

Three stories, each in increasing horror. 1) box fish got pulled into a filter intake (my mother told me he'd been "playing" in the intake all day.... he lived... I moved out. 2) My dad took care of my tank when I moved abroad, but got bored as he realized I would not be back anytime soon. He broke it down and sold off the supplies and fish. Feeling guilty he confessed over *****-atlantic phone lines about selling the red one (flame hawk) the square one (boxfish) the one with the white pennant (bannerfish) and the one with yellow one (tang). I asked, "what about the one that hugs the wall at night; when asleep?" Silence on the other end of the line.
"you mean the black and white one (vallentini puffer).?"
"Yeah..."
"Uh....."
Turns out he had forgotten that one in the tank, now two + weeks w/o power.... a couple days later I found out he was alive, in three inches of filthy water. He now lives in a shop display reef near my house.
3) as a child (ten or so y.o) i tossed out a "kissing fish" Helostoma temminckii because, well i was ten and didn't want the fish in the tank anymore (it would jump out and wind up on the carpet etc). I tossed it into a compost heap. three days later (in the middle of a hot july!) I unearthed the fish (in a morbid search for its bones!) only to find it flopping around! I felt ashamed and guilty so I tossed it back into the tank. Later it ended up in our pond and froze in a bad winter 9 years later.
Fish have the great abillity to die at a rate inverse to what you paid for them.
#added later: what's with the asterix over the word ***** (rhymes with pans and means accross as in transport) in transatlantic?

 

[Biggie]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6495160#post6495160 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Samala
Like Biggie, I've had fish survive cat attacks and munching. That poor percula clown never knew what was coming.. cat carried him off, I hear flopping and hissing.. cat is allowing the fish to bounce down the stairs while he swipes at him and attempts to make him lunch. A few bite marks later the clown, minus one pectoral, most of his caudal and two puncture wounds that just missed his air bladder and major organs.. goes back into the tank. Peanut Butter (his mate was Skippy) still lives on to this day. That was three years ago now.

>Sarah

Hehehe the cat waits for this to happen again everytime I go by the tank here he comes.

 

[Biggie]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6495160#post6495160 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Samala
Like Biggie, I've had fish survive cat attacks and munching. That poor percula clown never knew what was coming.. cat carried him off, I hear flopping and hissing.. cat is allowing the fish to bounce down the stairs while he swipes at him and attempts to make him lunch. A few bite marks later the clown, minus one pectoral, most of his caudal and two puncture wounds that just missed his air bladder and major organs.. goes back into the tank. Peanut Butter (his mate was Skippy) still lives on to this day. That was three years ago now.

>Sarah

Hehehe the cat waits for this to happen again everytime I go by the tank here he comes.

 

[Crazysps]

Hippo Tang had every sickness available it was about the size of a quarter when I received it. She had ich, swollen eyes and had diarieah like you would never think. This one fish could blow up the whole tank. Cleaner shrimp lived with her for threes months and now she is 3 years old and fat and resistant to just aout anything and everything and alll she eats is algae enriched brine shrimp she doesnt even like live algae feeds.

 

[Sk8r]

Had a black goldfish that got crunched in a rockfall. It was swimming around bent at a 45 degree angle, which was pretty pitiful. Being young, stupid, and a little inclined to give-it-a-try, I netted it out, lay it on the counter, and gave it a finger-poke above and below the bend, just to see if it could straighten and was just having a muscle cramp. There was a sickening crunch. The back straightened. The fish lived and swam for years.

In the same period, I had an angelfish (freshwater) lose absolutely all his fins, top, bottom, sides, and tail, in a fight with a predator. But he kept fighting, moving his little stubs. I kept him barebottom in a small 2 gallon, put in a bubbler that would keep him from settling but wouldn't batter him, target-fed him, and the fins began to grow back. He grew it all back, the side fins first, and within a few days he had a limited mobility---had a little clubbing in the tail and a decided ripple in the other fins when they grew back, but he made it.

 

[sloshesv]

I was trying to fish out the angelfish from hades and accidently hooked my wrasse when I tried to pull the bait away from him. It was a barbless hook, so the poor thing when flying through the air and landed on our tile floor. He was shook up for a day but is right as rain now.

 

[bcwalz]

I had a pleco in a fresh water tank tank a dive out of the tank sometime during the night. I found him on the floor stiff as a board looking like a mummy. I was going to flush him when he twitched. I put him back in the tank and he recovered. He was blind as a bat after that however. I guess his eyes didn't like being dried out for so long. He survived another year or so after that.

 

[sloshesv]

Wow, that's pretty wild.

 

[THEPHISHGUY]

My frag tank is gravity feed off of the overflow from the display. (half to frag tank, half to sump). Because I have it plumbed off of the overflow, I have the output into the frag tank covered very tightly with a 800 micron bag that is totally flush with the end of the PVC coming through the bulkhead. I bought a school of 5 blue chromis. Well for the last three days, I have only had four. I have checked the overflow and sump. I also looked in the frag tank but did not see him near the end of the PVC. Well, this morning I decided to take the micron bag of the input to the frag tank for cleaning. Well when I got back, there he was swimming in the frag tank. He has been living in a 1 inch PVC pipe for the last 72 hours obviously swimming straight up the PVC in order to stay alive. Boy the poor guy must be tired!!!!!

 

[Muscles]

I made a 2 newbie mistakes about 10yrs ago. Set up my first tank with undergravel and canister filter. I bought a clown fish, gobie, manderin, and some small corals etc. Tank ran decent for a few months then lost the manderin. I though he jumped and couldn't find him. He was getting skinny (lack of food) so I figured he had enough. A few days later (can't remember exactly) I cleaned out the canister filter only to find him in the bottom FAT as can be. I then decided to buy a snowflake eel. He got a hold of my clownfish and bit the last 3rd of his behind off right behind the dorsal fin. I thought he was a all done but decided to leave him in the tank. He swam in one spot pointing straight up. You could even see his spine. Anyway he made it through. I still have him today. His rear is deformed and a bit grew back. He has been through tank upsizes, downsizes, and upsizes again. He has been through it all. He has it made now but I put him through alot. I may take a pictur of him and attach. He's my boy

 

[mleinart]

I had two common pl*cos that I had bought at a Petsmart over 11 years ago to keep with a goldfish I had at the time. While I cant remember any specific situations, these things were impossible to kill. They lived in a 29gal and later a 37 gal tank by themselves. They put out so much waste (in addition to the damn algae discs that rotted when they didnt eat them) that to really keep the tank clean I had to clean both canister filters (Magnum 350 and H.O.T Magnum) twice a week and vacuum the gravel each time. Needless to say, I rarely did cleanings that often. There were times where the polution in the tank was so bad that I couldn't see an inch into it.. ammonia and nitrite readings off the chart.. smell the tank (in the basement) from the 2nd floor, etc. Many times I would come home for the weekend from college (my parents never cleaned the tanks) and think that they *MUST* be dead. Nope. They lived 11 years and each grew to 16" (I measured). One finally died a few months ago of an infection and the other killed itself two weeks later while I was on vacation (girlfriend found it 25 feet from the tank in the next room).

Poor guys.. I'm a bad person for not taking better care of them. They were monsters though...