PlanetCatfish.com

It's a quiet day on planet catfish, so I thought I'd start a new thread

What's the funniest action you ever seen in your fish tanks?

I'll get the ball rolling: One of the funniest things I have seen is the ongoing battle between a viscious baby terrapin and a mild-mannered 6" common pleco in my 180 gallon tank. (I've been trying to get rid of the terapin since it was given to me about six months ago--any one in London, UK interested?)

The terrapin is, without a doubt, the protagonist. He starts by creeping up on the pleco and trying to nip a chunk out of one of the pleco's pectoral fins. Most attacks fail at the last moment. Sometimes, however, the terrapin connects.

The pleco responds by jamming a fin under the terrapin and hurling him a couple of inches. Sometimes he repeats this several times, knocking the terrapin round and round in circles.

Once the pleco feels that he's got his message across, he will return to the glass for a rest. This is when the terrapin comes back for more. This time, rather than nip fins, he simply walks clumsily, claws out, all over the pleco until the pleco decides he's had enough.

The pleco's ultimate revenge? Picture, if you will, a 6" common pleco hovering mid-tank for a minute-and-a-half. Now picture a terrapin swimming frantically but getting nowhere. Now marry those two images, slowly rotating the terrapin until it's head first disappears under its carapace, and then that disappears under the pleco's lips.

Any one else with fishy anecdotes to liven up this miserable winter's evening?

Cheers,
JohnnyOscar

I have had a pair of Cory paralellus that during the spawning process would actually 'Kiss' when they met in mid water. Those of you that attended my talk at the OCA Extravaganza will remember the picture. When I get the chance I will scan the slide an post it.

Ian

In most recent memory I was watching the tank for a few minutes, both the common pleco and the bumblebee cat were out from their hiding places. the BB cat decided he wanted tohang out under the filter, where the pleco was. Henudged him a few times bu the pleco refused to move, there was a small tussel that resulted in the BB cat winning out. was funny to watch those two butt heads for a bit, they never really bit or nipped at each other, just butted heads together to make their point ;)


other than that, I loved seeing my BB cat chase a rosy red feeder fish around the tank for 15 minutes, that is the most active I have EVER seen that cat, finally caught the feeder and inhaled it in one gulp.

Here's the picture of the kissing C. paralellus.

They would interlace their barbles for several seconds while swimming in mid water, this process would take place only during spawning and only in mid water.

Ian

How CUTE is that?!?!?

That is sooo precious!!!

That is pretty darn cute.

My best would probably be the gold nugget and the L200 on the filter outflow after a water change has brought the water level up... they're the 2 that get that inche or so of great algae that everyone else is too wussy to go after. but they sometimes come out of the water past their pectoral fins to get the stuff above the water line.

;) the niger sharing his hideout with a little L134 is kinda cute too http://scott.aaquaria.com/nigerandL134.jpg

I had a bristlenose that would fall asleep on the glass and then a fish would nudge him and he would fall to the ground and finally wake up

When my betta, Shadow went through the bubbles of the bubble maker.




~Michelle ~

Hi,
the funniest action?
For the funniest actions in my tank is always my Chaetostoma sp. L 148 (Aqualog) responsible.
He is a real small nasty trouble maker, only about 7 cm of length.
When my Panaqolus albomaculatus LDA 31 were young and as small as the Chaetostoma, he tried to antagonize them whenever he met them and to dislodge them from their hiding places although there are more than enough hiding places and caves for every pleco in this tank.
The fights were quite funny, because the plecos sometimes stood free "in the air", pectoral fin at pectoral fin, like wrestlers in the ring.
And once during such a fight my Panaque cf. nigrolineatus L 191 lingered in the front of the tank on the ground. His size is about 20 cm.
The two wranglers "stood free in the air" pectoral fin to pectoral fin, and this time the Panaqolus won and the Chaetostoma made a somersault backwards and landed straight in the middle of the forehead of the much bigger Panaque.
For some moments there was silence, the Chaetostoma was sitting between the eyes of the Panaque and seemed really surprised and not knowing what to do now ;)
Then he swam away and hided himself. The big Panaque showed no reaction...


BTW: Today the two Panaqolus are much bigger than the Chaetostoma and he can´t bother them any more

This one doesn't involve catfish, but here goes anyway.

I had a pair of young snakeheads (Channa asiatica) at a TL of 15 cm in a 160L tank. As they breath air at the surface, the tank was only 75 % filled with water. One day I noticed that they'd uprooted a rather large plant and decided to plant it straight away. I removed the small piece of glass I used to cover the hole through which I fed the fish and stuck my middle finger down the hole intending to remove the glass covering the tank. At that moment, the male jumped up and bit my finger. Half my middle finger was down the throat of the fish and it was bashing its tail in an attemt to drag me into the tank. Talk about self confidence.

I have a bubbly air wand that is covered partially by gravel. The other night I had the main light in my room off, but had a smaller reading light on and I was watching the pictus swim, but then my pleco started trying to suck onto the bigger bubbles coming out of the gravel! He'd try for a little while the swim through the bubble wall a couple times and then rest on the gravel pile for a minute, looking very happy, and then he'd try to catch the bubbles again. It was so cute!

How come plecos are the goofballs of the catfish world?

JohnnyOscar wrote:It's a quiet day on planet catfish, so I thought I'd start a new thread

Think that's because of the bit of unexpected downtime earlier today.

I have several Lophiobagrus cyclurus in a 125 gallon tank, and the alpha male loves to spar with one of the other males. Normally it's just chasing, but sometimes they lock jaws and start tumbling around the tank. Aquatic stag beetles

Rusty

If we're not going catfish... I had overfilled one of my tanks a bit and it was just about at the point of running over... I was running past the tank to get to the faucet and all of the sudden this jet of water shoots out of the top of the tank and arcs out about 5 feet into the room... It was my female stingray at the top of the water just jetting water out her mouth and apparently she had the right angle and pressure to arc it across the room. Silly critter.

My Synodontis "polli white" that seem to think they're marine cleaners, ranks pretty high on the weird-sh*t-o-meter.....

and being attacked by Hoplo-males bent on defending their nest too. I was completely SOAKED......

the funniest cats I ever had were 4 minute Trichomycterus spp. You wouldn't see them at all, or perhaps see an eye or whisker stick out of the sand. Until I tossed in food, that was! Talk about sheer accelleration and bumbing into each other, spinning around on their nose when they bumped into other cats and racing up and down the glass all in attem,pts to feed....CRAZY!!

Another great leagh were some true Callichthys callichthys I once kept. They quickly discovered they could "swim" right through the sand......imagine the mess after a feeding round with tubifex!
They definitely kept me busy. planting and re-planting, that is.
And you probably know those "monstermovies" with underground critters that move around to kill people (Tremors for example). You see this bulge of sand moving forwards upspeed; that was EXACTLY like a big Callichthys hunting down live worms!

One time my crayfish-lobster decided to move out. So in the nighttime he escaped the aquarium, only to find my cat being very interested in it. But after biting the cat with its vlaws, my crayfish hided behind my bed, and I found it in the morning - all covered in dust. Since that episode it hasn´t escaped again

Funniest non-catfish story (but it does involve a CAT!)

When one of my cats was younger, he would jump onto my 75 gallon, which has a clear glass canopy. Well, one day I was cleaning the tank and had removed the glass canopy. The cat didn't know this and jumped right into the tank! My oscars were quite surprised at the sudden presence of a furry animal in their tank but it didn't take them long to start nipping at him. I had to scoop an arm under my cat and give him a heave-ho out of the tank, he went running down the hall with his tail pinwheeling behind him, spraying water all over the walls. It was hilarous! Needless to say he doesn't jump up there anymore

Currently I have a 12 year old Liposarcus (13"), a 14" (much younger!) Gibbiceps and a one-eyed oscar in the 75. Oh and a 6" Lima shovelnose but he doesn't play a part in this story. The oscar likes to nip the plecos, and the Gibbiceps often tries to squabble with the older pleco. In both cases, the older pleco always swims away from her perch, slashes at the oscar or gibbiceps with her pectorals until they get the idea, then swims back to her perch, it's quite fun to see. Plecos have such personality!

At the moment our funniest, most entertaining fish activity is
that of a young pim blochii whose 'territory' is under the belly of
an iridescent shark. Wherever the shark goes, the pim goes along
with him.

See a picture!

http://www.resorter.com/fish.html

Kathy S

Eee! Serious cuteness on that one!!!

I saw the picture so cute!

My cats are not too funny, just cute... But I had this incident some years ago.. I had a pair of Kribs (Pelvicachromis pulcher, ci*bip bip*lids..), that used a cave as their home. Everything was chased away from that cave!

One day I bought this rather large crayfish (15cm/7inch)! It just broke into the cave, and plugged it, with just two threatening claws showing... The kribs (fem 5cm/2inch) tried, and tried, to kick out this armored occupant.. No way this could be done... One day, when the kribs was swimming around with their fry, the crayfish took a rare daylight trip outside the cave: the female krib rapidly swam in front of the crayfish, teasing it, and the claws of the cray were frenetically trying to hit the target. Then the krib swam rapidly straight upwards, and the steeply straight down again, on the INSIDE of the crayfish' claw-guard.. a quick turn UNDER left claw, along the body, and then she nibbed these small, soft paddle like "feet" under the front part of the crayfish-tail!
EXPLOTION! TOTAL PANIC! very sensitive spot! Crayfishes panics backwards, and it just speeded around the surface of the tank, for at least 2 minutes... trying to get out out the tank, away from that viscious fishy...

Ta-da! New secret weapon! After that, it worked every time... The female krib was queen of the kingdom, small, cute, and brave as a gladiator. No lack of self-confidence!

We have a cat and used to have an electric cat(fish). Once while doing some tank maintenance, we put the e-cat in a bucket. The ever-curious cat stuck its paw in, got zapped, looked very freaked, as if it couldn't believe what had just happened, and stuck its paw in again, perhaps as some kind of reality check. This process repeated itself many times, with the expression on the cat's face growing more quizzical with each iteration. Talk about getting a buzz!

Do catfish do live performances?

Ok. One day, I came home from school, and I sat down at the table by the fishtank to work on a puzzle (I like puzzles!). A looked at the tank out of the corner of my eye. I was like ??? Looking a bit more closely, I saw that all the other fish, the Silver Dollars, the Angelfish, even the little neons, appeared to watching a group of three catfish- two armored cats and a spotted cat. The three catfish were swimming around and on top of each other, like acrobats doing flips in the air! I watched for about a minute, all the other fish lined up like an audience, until I slipped on the tabletop and almost fell. The fish got scared and swam away. Still, I think that is kinda weird....

Hey! Two weeks of vacation!!! Whoo!!!
-Elle

Those Calichthus cats win my vote for craziest cat fish. I used to hold tubifex in my hand and those guys would push there way into my fist in order to get the worms, suffice to sat they are not hand shy.

Hi,
My clown pleco and my Platydoras costatus are now very good friends.The clown likes to hide under his belly and Patydoras doesnt seem to care about this.The funny thing is that when my clown pleco see a fish coming to disturb Platydoras sleep,he comes out and defends the Platydoras.

the funniest thing I've seen in my tanks is guppies and mollies trying to cross they're "genes" if you know what i mean. FREAKS

My craziest would be with my Sailfin "Salty". He has a corner that he waits in for algae wafers. When he's hungry he sits and waits there. The goldfish in the tank also want them. Salty will wait for the wafer to get down to him. Go out and search it out and then hide an inch or two away. The goldfish come down for it and he zooms out with all his "sails" waving to chase them off. He'll do this repeatedly for about fifteen minutes at a time until he gets bored and eats the wafer. We call it "Fish Fights".