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Here comes a story that is a little sad, a little happy, a little unbelieveable and yet very true.

Yesterday I swapped some fishes between tanks. Mostly because the L183 tank seemed to be a major letdown. PH just never went below 7, even though the water was super soft and KH was below 1°. I tried for quite some time, but had no spawns on the L183 for about a year now. So I decided to give them a different tank.

Like most of you will know, catching plecos in a planted and nicely decorated tank is a huge pain. So taking out most of the woods and caves is a must.

Fast forward one hour and I caught the L183, moved the Contradens in the old L183 tank and vice versa. Put all the wood and caves back in their tanks and started cleaning up.

That's when I found the body of a young on the floor. It must have been stuck to one of the woods from these tanks. Did not expect to have any fry swimming in these tanks. L260 are really striving in the shadows and that just proves it once again.

It's skin was dry, it was cold, and lifeless. It must have dropped from the top row of tanks which is approximately 180cm (6feet) off the ground.

I grabbed it from the floor, full of remorse and sorrow. It had a nice size of 4cm (1.5") TL. Which takes pretty long to reach on this slow growing species. After I checked for any vital signs, though the pure look of it made me realize the bitter truth - there was no hope for this poor guy - I dropped it into a plastic box full of water that just happened to stand there. It sank to the ground and turned belly up. I intended to dispose of it later, once my mood might have lightened up.

I left the house for one hour.

Came back to finish the cleanup in the fishroom. A quick and panicked movement in the plastic box immediately caught my attention.
He came back to me!

He survived drying out, dropping to the floor, and being left in cold water (18°C/64F or less room temperature) for an hour.
He is recovering in a fry box right now. Seems to be doing fine.

Decided to keep this little guy for a long time now. Should call him "hope" or something.

Thanks for reading this story of mine. I hope it will help someone to find a little hope even in dire situations.

Wow that's quite a story, hopefully it recovers and does fine. I've got a few young L260 growing up myself I appreciate how slow growing they are.

If I find a dead fish I always leave it in water for a bit, but none have come back yet!

I have plenty which often look dead, live up to their name of lazarus catfish, I've got used to it now, but I used to disturb them with a stick to check they were still alive in the first few days of keeping them!

@Jobro, good for you on the survival of that little L260. I've had some (3-5) little L397 that were on a countertop for about an hour that survived. They too were attached to wood I removed from tank and fell onto table top. Found them later when I was moving the decor back into tank. Most survived but one did not.

Amazing little fish.

Cheers, Eric

Once a shipment of Gynogeophagus balsanii went wrong, it arrived a day too late. Fishes were lifeless, but I did not want to admit they were dead. So I put them into buckets I had prepared wiht fresh water, and after a few hours 2 strarted to swim.

Went home, and put the fishes and corpses into their tank (they were the first fishes) and tried to sleep. The next day, 3 out of the 6 corpses has swum away - so I only lost 3 fishes, where I expected to loose 8.

A fish is only dead to me when the head is loose, or when it is stinks.