Who do you think is the worst fish caretaker you've met?

[Silent Doh]

Ok, I admit it, the two worst aquarists I know are my teacher, and I at a young age. When I had my first fish, I got this idea to feed them strawberry milk. (Before you start preparing to kill me for not caring for my fish, I was maybe 2 1/2 when this happened.

I MISS MY FISH ERNIE & BERT!!!

[Silurus]

I at a young age

That's probably the kind of answer you get from most people.
I once thought that Melanochromis and neon tetras would make good tank mates.

[jellyfish]

I worked at a pet store for a few years and I'll never forget the lady who came in to buy some tetras but she was leery because the fish in her aquarium killed any new fish she tried to introduce. When I asked what type of fish she already had (expecting her to say african cichlids or oscars or something), she said that she only had a few assorted tetras that definitely should not have been aggressive. After asking everything I could think of that might be killing the new fish, it dawned on me to ask how often she fed the fish in her tank. Come to find out, once or twice a week ! Shoot, I'd probably chow down on anyone that came through the front door too if I was only fed that often! Jeri

[racoll]

A friend of mine kept a Hemibagrus wykii (with no eyes) in a 4 foot community tank.

Apparently it being blind made quite a lot of difference, as it only used to eat the other fish "occasionally" !

[coelacanth]

I once thought that Melanochromis and neon tetras would make good tank mates.

The Melanochromis probably agreed.

I think this thread needs to be answered with care, I'll just say the worst aquarist (in fact, this individual was no more an aquarist than I am an opera singer) I ever enountered is not the colleague I enjoy working with at the moment.

[sunshine]

The worst owner ive met is the one we got this tank from. He had the tank for over a year, en he had NEVER cleaned it. The fish were fed about once every 4 days. And in that year more then half of the fish died. How the other half survived is a mirracle. His nitrate (do you write it like that?) was over the 300 mg/l!!!

Anyway the fish that survived live a happy life with us now!

[zenyfish]

I at a young age.

I once tried to take a bath with a small bluegill I kept in a jar.

[Marc van Arc]

I used to help out at a wholesaler many years ago. Every week he got shipments with loads of unusual catfish.
A little too tempting for me. Thus my tank became a kind of camp site: fish got in, fish went out and that action repeated itself almost every week in an amazing pace.
Once I took some fish with me, put them in the tank, decided I would rather have the other species which I didn't take and got them out the next morning to take them back. They had been with me for almost 12 hours.....

[Silent Doh]

I at a young age.

I once tried to take a bath with a small bluegill I kept in a jar.

MY GOD!!! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!! A BATH!!! KEPT IN A JAR!!! How old were you anyway? 3? 4? 2 1/2? Just think about it, if you didn't kill it, the soap, did, and if the soap didn't kill it... Umm. How long after did that fish live, anyway?

Man, that makes my strawberry milk feeding seem like forgetting to feed my fish one morning.

[zenyfish]

I don't remember if I intended to use soap, probably not.

In any case, the water was so warm, the fish freaked and swam erratically all over the tub. I got it out in time into cool water with ice cubes, and it recovered.

I can't remember if it died or I let it go ...

[Phathead6669]

Wal-Mart.


Everytime I go there and go see there fish most of them are dead at the bottom of the tanks.

[Fish Demon]

Working at an LFS, I've seen plenty of people who claim to have kept fish for a long time, but don't take care of their fish like they should. I would hate to imagine what their early fish-keeping days were like...

So I'll just go ahead with what I did when I was about seven or something. I think it was three goldfish and six sticklebacks in a three gallon tank. My reasoning at the time was that since the sticklebacks were not an inch long, they didn't count towards the "inch per gallon" rule and I could put as many as I wanted. I think all of those fish perished in about a week or two.

[worton[pl]]

Well when my fish got sick first time (ich) and my grandfather (who introduced hobby to me was dead so nobody else knew what to do:() I tried to cure my poor fish and add to tank malachite green, blue and a bit of chlorine :]. I read in a book that all of this medicine can cure ich (so I mix them for better effect :))

since that times I've never mixed medicines anymore :]

Regards.

[Silent Doh]

I remember when my fish had Ich, I had a two gallon hexagonal tank sold at Petsmart with an air pump and undergravel filter. I had only a couple of fish, one was black and I named him blackster (I was about 7 and could not think of a better name) and I also had another fish, which I can't remember, and a bottom feeder, he looked like an oto. but was white-ish and had a black zipper-like pattern (chain loach?) Who I named zipper. The fish that I can't seem to remember had ich, and, even my parents knew what that meant, the next day, they purchased the treatment, and it seemed to work, but we forgot to reapply it once a month, as we thought that our tank was rid of the horrible thing. But later, all of our fish died from ich. I still miss them.

P.S. Not trying to be off topic, but yesterday my hamster died of old age. She was one of the very few hamsters who had survived wet tail, which kills somewhere around 6/7 of all hamsters who get it. Unfortunatly, her coming down with wet tail must have lowered her longevity, as she had just turned 2. I stayed by her for 2 hours while she was in a coma like state before she was pronounced dead. The good news is, right before she died, I took her out, like I had started to do recently. Before she lost consiousness, all of my family had time to say goodbye to her. Here is a picture of her.: