This is the story of a
fish… a fish that I’m quite fond of actually, since he was one of
the first fish I bought, along with a pair of kribensis. The fish
I’m referring to is a convict cichlid, a medium sized South American
fella. When I first got him, I spent almost a month trying to form a
convict pair, but was having problems getting a male and female;
neither the LFS guy nor myself could tell the difference. I started
with two females, replaced one female for another female (grr) but
eventually I found a male and added him to the mix. Each fish was
about 1.5”, at the time they were in a 20 gallon high. for hiding
spots I had a fake tree stump and this decoration with these
crumbled castle walls on top of these caves, with a 3 or 4" hole
with an air stone inside of a hollow area. I didn’t like the air
stone idea so I removed it, dug a big hole in the gravel and put the
crumbled-wall-cave-thing (hereafter referred to as the rock, I know
it’s not rock but from a fishy point of view it is) on top of the
hole, making a nifty cave that the convicts later enhanced.
So anyway, the fish were
doing pretty well, a little bit of scuffling now and then but each
female had their own cave (one inside the stump, the other under the
rock) to retreat to. The male was like a kid in a candy store…
showing off for one female, and as soon as she turns her back (or
even before!) he’s off checking out the other one. You can imagine
the result, hundreds of baby convicts! I unloaded two batches of
them at one of the LFS’s in my area before I started feeding the fry
to my Oscar. He loves em! (evil grin)
Then, one day, I wake up
and feed the fish as usual. All convicts accounted for. I mean, it’s
not hard, one… two… three. Later on in the day, I was going to go
crush up an algae wafer for another tank when I happened to walk by
the convict tank (in the same room) and thought I’d take a look in
passing at my big fella. So hello convicts, one… two… ummm… I know I
had three fish in here before… hmm. He must have jumped out! Thus
began a frantic search around the fish tank, with nothing to be
found. Even accounting for flipping and flopping on the ground
there’s no way he could have gotten that far, plus someone had been
sitting 8 feet away from the tank and didn’t hear anything. Well, on
this day I was planning to move my guys to a 33 gallon I had just
vacated. Let me just say that you can’t keep convicts in anything
less than a 30 gallon tank! They were way outgrowing my 20 gallon
and I’d only had them for a few months.
I decided to move the fish
anyway, figuring that he was just hiding really well, maybe under
the rock or inside the stump, there was a cavity big enough to hold
him there. I removed all the ornaments and still only two fish. I
was careful when I took them out, expecting a fish (he’s 4” long,
mind you) to come flying out but nothing happened. Now when he
didn’t turn up I really didn’t know what to think. The other fish
couldn’t have eaten him, he was almost twice their size. They would
be bloated as heck if they had. He didn’t jump out, I was sure of
it. Was he buried in the gravel? (that sounds dumb but I thought it
for a couple of seconds) anyway as I was pondering, I changed my
mind and decided to put the stuff back in and wait until I could
figure out what happened to the male, because I really had no idea.
Until I see this.
As you can see, I’ve
solved my little mystery. This is a picture of the underside of the
rock, with my poor fishy stuck in probably the hardest to get at
point in there with his pectoral fin stuck outside the hole. The
light is a flashlight used to illuminate the hole.
Of course the first thing
I thought to do was run and get the digital camera, because things
like this are what digital cameras and online photo galleries are
made for!!
I knew as long as he was
in the tank he would be able to breathe so I left the rock in the
tank while I thought of a plan. It sounds silly now, but I tried
poking him and seeing if I could dislodge him by just giving that
extra little something, but no luck. He was jammed in there good.
Which sucks, because I like the rock too and it cost me fifteen
bucks! But I like the fish more and it’s also alive, so I chose to
get the fish out of the rock by whatever means required.
To this end, I retrieved
my hammer and my pair of robo-grip pliers. After deciding where the
fish was and where I could safely smash this cursed rock I placed
one, then two mighty blows (heh) which left a gaping hole in the top
part of the rock. A little robo-gripping quickly separated the fishy
prison from the main part.
here’s me after the first
stage, now to get him out of the rock he’s trapped in (in the tank)
and into the 33 gallon, which is on the desk behind me.
A little bit of
ninja-robo-grip technique quickly reduced the rock to pieces, with
nary a mark on Mr. fish… Who is that masked man anyway? Also, note
the increasing amount of water on the towel beside the tank…
You can see the effective
results of the ninja-robo-grip technique here:
and here:
and also here:
Oddly enough, the fish
didn’t do anything at all while I was working. I tried to keep the
rock under water, but sometimes I had to take it out to get the
right leverage. I actually think that he knew I was trying to help
him (despite stopping to take pictures every five minutes) and was
letting me do my thing. Maybe he was just super stressed and it had
nothing to do with me but hey it’s my fish I can pretend at least!
:-)
Eventually I snapped the
right piece and SPLASH he fell right into the tank. He was pretty
freaked out, darting all over the tank, so I put the tree trunk back
in and he promptly swam inside it and didn’t come out. I’m thinking,
oh no not again! But he popped his head out a bit later when I
dropped a little food in. I decided that he had had enough for the
day, and sunset was approaching for him (9 pm) so I left him for the
night.
He was a little calmer in
the morning, ate normally but was still hiding. That afternoon I
moved him to the 33 gallon... He was quite worried at first, but
within a few days he was back to his old self again. I made VERY
sure that all the decorations in this tank can handle a 6" fish,
both on the outside, and ON THE INSIDE!
here's a picture of the
new convict tank. The male is behind 'his' stump (moved from the
20g) on the left side of the tank.
And so ends the tale of my
silly convict. If you should choose to keep these lovely fish, which
I recommend anyone try at least once, especially if you're
interested in SA cichlids as I am. Convicts are not too big but are
tough enough to handle pretty much any other SA fish, and when they
don't have fry they are actually kind of laid back. Three things are
important for convicts: enough tank space, rocks and caves (not too
small!), and an appropriate dither fish (I use tiger barbs, they're
fast enough to get away and large enough not to get eaten). Given
these, and of course an adequate diet and clean water, you'll have
hours of amusement watching your convicts chase the dithers around.
Questions and comments are
welcome and can be sent to styleofthetiger@rogers.com. Flames and
spam will be forwarded to /dev/null so don't waste both our time.
THE END
Now go take care of your
fish! ;)
