Bristlenose survives >1Hour out of water

[behhl]

Hi, believe this is my first post and I just wanted to tell the story of how my BN survived 1 hour out of water

I have a bristlenose in my outdoor 'tank' (a large earthen pot) on my front porch: on Saturday morning (10th Jan) I found him on my frontlawn; it had jumped from the tank sometime near dawn after dining on some super zucchini the previous night!

From checking with my other family members we can confirm it was observed to have been at least 1 hour on the lawn; He was still twitching whne touched, so I put him back into the tank, and he seems to be surviving. He was hanging on the net which I lowered back into the water for about 5 mins, then it dropped off and hid between the sponge filter and the tank wall; its skin seemed a little ragged after spending such a long time out of water and the guppies were pecking on his skin and even at his eyes, so I started the feeding the guppies fish food to distract them from the BN. After maybe 15 min it swam down into its normal hiding hole below the rocks. The guppies seemed to leave it alone now.

This morning (Monday 12th) I can confirm visual inspection it is still alive and kicking its tail hiding in its cave, so .... cross my fingers.

Incredible huh?

BTW it came to my pot about 5cm length jet black with clearly white spots circa Aug 08, and it is now maybe 13cm but does not seem black and white anymore, more like a splotchy brown/black. Do this guys change colour that much?

Cheers

beh

[andywoolloo]

so glad he lived! his poor fins are in bad shape tho. Poor little guy.

[behhl]

yeah, he looks a little ragged - hope he recovers ok though, fingers crossed.

he never showed any sign of jumping for months then whopper just does it - are they known as jumpers?

[andywoolloo]

when I had my BN's with a Hang On the Back filter they would climb up the intake eating algae and then jump over to the filter waterfalls and eat all the algae or whatever. It freaked me out that they might fall in the filter so I got a canister for their tank lol.

[panaque]

18 months ago I reported on the amazing survival of my catfish after their tank burst: http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... =4&t=20191. Most of these would have been out of the water for at least an hour and one Otocinclus for 9 hours or more. All of them still survive to this day. The amazing oto lost an eye but is otherwise healthy.

[yeattsca]

WOW! that's prety crazy. The only ting thats ever juped out of my tank and survived was 2 JackDempsys, they wer only out for 1/2 an hour thoe. I'v heard that eals have the ability to spebd days out of the water, due to a thick coat of slime that hardens and keeps them moist. Does anyone know if this is posible?

[MatsP]

As long as the fish doesn't dry out too much, and particularly with catfish that sometimes breathe atmospheric oxygen, it is not that unusual for them to survive for a long time without water.

When I moved a tank, and unknowingly one of my bristlenoses had hidden itself in a bamboo pipe when I got the bamboo out of the tank, bristlenose and all. I didn't even know the fish was in there until it swam out when I put the pipe back into water. That must have been at least two hours after taking the bamboo out - I started by emptying all "hiding spaces", and didn't put them back in until I had filled the tank with water in the new location, and there was a bit of loading van and half an hours drive, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was more like three hours.

Rumour has it that large plecos

Hypostomus

were exported in "the good old days" wrapped in wet newspaper rather than large plastic bags. This would involve some 24-48 hours of "out of water". Apparently, these fish sometimes survive dry spells by hiding in a hole in the bank of a drying out river.

--
Mats

[yeattsca]

Cool! Always a good thing to know!

[behhl]

Wow, its heartening to hear all the survival recounts - I'm much more optimistic of my BN longer term survival then! That 9 hr Oto is absolutely incredible! Unfortunately my own experience is that several instances when Otos would jump from my tank they never survived.

[yeattsca]

African lung fish survive thr dry season in a hardend cacoon in dryed up river beds in africa.

[torbanite]

Don't know if you've ever come across this report: http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/elpubs/pd ... -v04-1.pdf
It deals mainly on the ecological problems caused by plecos as invasive species (in the US). However, page 4 has some interesting pictures of the burrows + dried out fish and says:

The authors have observed San Antonio River fish that are, for all appearances, “dead” in the dry burrows above de-watered reaches of the river, but which are, in fact, very much alive (Figure 7). Such fish, when returned to the water, recover after a short time and swim away. Burrows may also be used as refugia during cold weather (Nico and Martin 2001).

Pretty impressive fish all in all.. unless your job is preventing river bank erosion I guess

Martin

[hotsauce4887]

A net can mess up his bristles and his fins, use a plastic bowl to get him out

[hotsauce4887]

That pleco was very lucky and I'm glad to see he is doing prety O.K

[Curby]

thats mad how it survived glad it did...it looks like L182 Starlight Bristlenose?? and looks like a male...
must be surviver...