Pet fish? Anyone?

Strong Bad · 03-19-2007, 02:26 PM

I was reading the Gardening thread...aaaand noticed we don't have a thread just for fish lovers!

Well, anyone of you out there own an Aquarium?

I have a crazy plastic (11litre) tank with one fish. Greg.
I bought 12 feeder fish for $3 and he was the only one that survived. I've had a bad history of killing fish in about a month.. but he's lasted since Sept, surprisingly enough.

---

I once bought 2 butterfly Koi for $20 each. They died within a month and I got really pissed off. Yup. I think the Plucko I had killed them.

Storm · 03-19-2007, 03:57 PM

Greg is an awesome name for a fish! My uncle is called Greg.

But yeah, i'm a fishie keeper, though I house some of the wierd ones too. I have two african lungfish, J and Jim. J is grey and Jim is brown with black spots, both are cool, and J is a lot bigger than Jim. We've had J for about 5 years, Jim for 4, although the species is ment to survive for as long as 100 years. In the wild they bury themselves in a mucus cocoon in the dry season and are able to live in them for up to 4 years- pretty snazzy!

We also have an ornate birchir, who is also pretty neato. As for a really characteristic fish, we have Shitty, an orange malawi cihlid. He's called Shitty because he beats up other fish and makes them all sad... or dead, so he's living in an aquarium with Squirtle, the map turtle and Plec the plec. Shitty can't hurt Squirtle or Plec, but he does annoy them sometimes. We have a community tank with calm malawi cichlids, keyhole cichlids, a few neon tetras, guppies, a planchecs, a plec, gouramis and loaches.

A few months ago we set up a brackish water tank, which is now home to an eel, two gobies and two pufferfish. The puffers are really friendly and adorable! They're called Poof and Princess...

I used to have a red bellied piranha called Chunky. He was great and he danced when you bobbed up and down opening and closing your mouth outside his tank.

Strong Bad · 03-19-2007, 04:14 PM

Well, there are fish that require a water heater and crazy filters. And then there are crappy .29 cent gold fish...

I'm not a fish expert or anything.. so I can't really recommend specific types. Just start with feeder fish! That's what I did. Buy 10 for like $1. They're easy to maintain and you don't feel so bad if they die.

Yeah, as FDL mentioned, pics are helpful. I have some pictures of my dead koi.. but none of Greg.

My Koi were named "Bag-of-Cats" and "Luke Skywalker".

darkViVi · 03-19-2007, 04:14 PM

Well, I never owned an aquarium but I want one.

I want many different kinds of fish, all of them eats other fish

The kind I particularly want is a SiameseFighting Fish. It usually lives in South-East Asia (Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand) where it can grow to a size of two inches (4 in captivity).

Whats interesting about this particular kind of fish, is that it in fact can survive for a long period on land, which even makes it possible for the fish to escape from the aquarium.

A friend of mine had African Fighting Fish and they ruled that aquarium, they slayed all the other fish he put in there.
'Twas great.

Boco · 03-19-2007, 04:15 PM

I like fish. I have two aquariums. The one is in my bedroom and the other is in the living room. The one in the living room is a little larger and it used to house a fish named Oscar. I had that fish for almost six year and it was as large as my hand but apparently it passed away a couple of months ago. If I remember right I bought that fish for 30 euros and at that time it was much smaller than it used to be the last three years.
As for the other aquarium that is in my room and it is slightly smaller, it now houses at about 15 fish. None of them is larger than 10cm long, though. I have some of them for more than 6 months while few of them were added later on.

Strong Bad · 03-19-2007, 04:29 PM

Siamese fighting fish (or Betas) are extremely common as far as I know. They're pretty easy to manage and you can even buy water plants that the fish can live in.... Like, a vase with a plant and the beta just eats the roots and stuff to survive.

They're beautiful fish though. They don't normally attack other fish... just fish of the same species. Yeah, hold a mirror upto one and it'll change colours. Fun!

darkViVi · 03-19-2007, 04:44 PM

Wow, you know your fish

Yeah, they are easy to manage but don't live very long though. (Well, longer than 1$ gold fish but, I dunno how much 2 years is in fish years.)
I didn't know it changed color.. My mates didn't, instead they just went for the kill, but that was a different specie though.

Hmm so they attack each other..? Hopefully they aren't expensive.

@ Boco: 15 fish??? Whoa!

Strong Bad · 03-19-2007, 04:54 PM

15 fish isn't all that much.... Well, depending on the size of the aquarium anyway. My friend has like.. 30+ fish in his..

He also has an eel, shark and a crab! Pretty big one too... like.. the size of a hand. I dunno... He's spent a lot of money on 'em. I don't know if I'd be willing to spend that much.

darkViVi · 03-19-2007, 05:03 PM

WTF????

Is he trying to build his own personal ocean?

But yeah, Sharks are number 3 on my list after Piranhas (if that's how they are spelled in English).

And an eel. Hahahahaha

*Chez Daja* · 03-19-2007, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by darkViVi

Is he trying to build his own personal ocean?

That would so rock.

Anyways, we have three loaches and a goldfish.

We had another loach, but one day I woke up, and it just wasn't there, :S, when I questioned my mother about it, she said I probably sucke dit up with the tank cleaner.

...Fuck.

Anyway, the loaches are called Buscuit, Weevil and Fig. The other one was called Squidge. WHY DID THE CUTE ONE HAVE TO DIE!?

The goldfish... I dunno what that one is called; I'm guessing my brother named it. Probably something stupid, like Ken.

Anyway, I went to the fish shop today, actually. They have two giant catfish... Bigger than a head. That was ****ing creepy, though.

I'd like to get an eel, they're cute. But my tank is only six litres, so it'd be squished.

I'd like to own more someday, though. I likes le fish.

Govinda · 03-19-2007, 08:14 PM

I have two goldfish in a small bowl on my desk. It is decorated with multicoloured wee stones, a blue bridge, and a small stone I lifted from the top of Ben Nevis.

Gandhi is a little over a year and a half old, and was purchased during a day spent at the beach with my friend and my pipe. He is huge and, erm, orange. Just kind of swims around, but he follows my finger if I press it against the tank.

His friend is called Ringo. I'm sure she's a girl fish, Gandhi and her look like they're kissing all the time. She's a sick fish, sadly. She's always been like that. When I got her, about a month ago, she had a really bad looking lip and was being bullied by her pet shop tankmates. She seems happier now though.

I'm not really into fish, though. I just like having wee living things around the place.

OmniTense · 03-20-2007, 01:39 AM

Icthiology is just that

....
icky

The only major run in I've had with fish in my life was snorkeling ten feet away from a five foot Great Barracuda...

I used to keep an aquarium when I was like six. But that was before I found out the tragically brief life-span of my fish I had bought...

Anachlirium · 03-20-2007, 03:39 AM

I like fish! Eating them and looking at them! I'm the world's biggest seafood fan...

Anyway, this thread IS about PET fish.. So..

Yeah, I've had many pet fish. When I was 5, I had the [originally named] goldfish, Spots and Stripes. But you know, unfortunately they just die all so fast.. So I didn't have fish for a long time after. Not really until a couple of years ago, now that I think about it.

First we had Spike, a siamese fighting fish. Mum's always had an obsession with Spike [the uber-blonde vampire in Buffy] and so have I, so she named her pet fish after him. He was that really deep purple with red fringing.

Then we had a couple more that just didn't last.. Both Fred and Rusty lasted only a few weeks. They were also both fighting fish, both red, too.

And now Sparkles [named by my 8 year old sister]. Another fighting fish. He's this really pretty turquoise ^^

Freedom · 03-20-2007, 06:49 AM

I have fish and I heard from my friend that one of her fish actually ate the other two. The gigantic one. I also had experience that I witnessed the carnivous fish bite the head off another but luckly, the headless fish was dead. Then yeesh. Come on....it's a BABY FISH!!!! A stupid jumbo carnivous fish.

There's the pearlscale goldfish.....the chubby ones that I'm taking care of and neon fish. o_o|||