The Most Expensive Fish You've Lost

[Taratron]

Maybe you didn't QT enough or maybe the fish died despite the medications. I bought four L14s from a good importer, but over a few weeks, despite the varied diet and medication to take care of the sunken belly and stringy white poop, I lost all four. The hit to the wallet is pretty bad (this was also my Xmas gift to myself) but watching them die was pretty hard too.

But a few years ago I had some outbreak that wiped out almost all my bristlenose plecos, and even now some are not breeding. A while before that, my adult hoplos, who took food from my hands, got some nasty fungus and all died.

$400 is probably not a lot in the big scheme of things, but losing all four L14s was rough. I remember being upset when I lost my only longfin blue-eyed bristlenose female, and when moving tanks around, I lost an adult H zebra (that one still bothers me, I kept her body preserved).

So celebrate in loss: what is the most expensive fish you've ever lost?

[Bas Pels]

After 40 years in the hobby, I 've lost most of my fishes. Whether expensive or not, if they lived a long time, that's OK.

But I felt the most cheated when I swapped (in a petshop) a group of 7 Botia modesta @ 12 cm each for 2 L24 which I never saw.

The fish were OK, but I've seen them when I bought them, a year later when I moved house and that was it. When I moved house a year later, I could not find them at all.

They did not survive long, that's obvious, but their nocturnity felt worse

[TwoTankAmin]

i once accidentally killed a tank which held 24 zebra plecos @ 2+ inch (5 cm).

[Viktor Jarikov]

Apart from 24"-31" koi worth a thousand or two (some of which I bought for $400 at a wholesale event), I'd have to say a $500 two-foot Brachyplatystoma juruense.

Some extremely rare ones that hurt the most are also my Rocky, a 1.5' Lithodoras dorsalis, and a 1' wels catfish. But I've killed / lost countless fish, maybe a thousand or more over the last decade, which makes it hard to remember.

[amiidae]

Some extremely rare ones that hurt the most

Same here.

I lost many rare ones due to lack of available info and knowledge (pre-internet era and for some.. even now). Thats what keeping these oddball fishes can be so exciting !

For me, rare may not necessary be or always expensive. They are just extremely hard to come by.

[Narwhal72]

Well sad to say that I can add to this list.

Over the weekend, due to a heater malfunction, I lost my tank of zebra plecos. 6 fish @$200 ea.

I had only gotten one spawn out of them but I had already given the babies away.

What's most unfortunate is that they were only a few weeks away from being moved into a nice new heated fish room and I wouldn't have had to worry about a heater malfunction.

Murphy's law should be repealed.

Andy

[jp11biod]

ouch... I lost a single zebra once when a young adult got tangled in some thread I had used to attach some java fern to a piece of driftwood. I have lost a tankful of young P Compta and L-129 to a heater malfunction.

[bekateen]

Wow, sorry for your loss Andy. That is painful to think about. (as are the other tails... er, tales... mentioned above).

You only lose expensive fish if you buy expensive fish. For budgetary reasons, I've never bought the top dollar fish that many people keep, but I've been fortunate to get a few expensive species for low prices. That doesn't make the pain any less. For work, I bought 7 jumbo

Corydoras robustus

. The retailer was charging $80 per cory for them, although I didn't pay quite that price. Within two weeks I lost 6 of the 7, and for research purposes I euthanized the seventh before I lost it too.

#NeverAgainUntilNextTime

Cheers, Eric

[TwoTankAmin]

The problem is that many of the neater fish most of us want are always too expensive. Either they are rare, hard to collect, hard to spawn or a host of other factors that cause them to be so costly.

Noit that this matters, but the species I killed the most of were otos. I have kept assorted bristlenose, zebras, 173s, 236s, contradens, L450s and even altum angels. I have worked with sterbai, panda, similis and paleatus who also did well. But I had to kill about 75 or more otos before I figured it would be criminal for me to continue down this path.

[Tony4143]

For me it would be my 9+" L025 jumped out the tank because I forgot to put the lid back on.