Another tragedy.

My 1 year old Oscar managed to teleport himself out of his tank sometime during yesterday morning/afternoon and ended up on the floor where I found it very much dead and dry last night.

Clearly I misjudged his actual jumping ability, because he must have managed to not only lift the metal cover of the tank, but actually jump through and past it all in one go.

About the only fortunate part of this event is that I needed to drain and move the tank anyway, so that the replacement floors can be installed after the flood we had recently with a tap breaking.

Seems the bad luck just doesn't end.


The worst part of it, is that my girlfriend is absolutely distraught. This after she didn't want to believe me a little over a year ago when I tried to convince her that Oscars have personality and aren't like other fish.

 

Eish SauRoN, truly sorry to hear that

This Oscar must've been one hell of an acrobat to manage that.

 

Which is why I'm referring to it as teleporting, because the lid was most definitely closed, and it takes quite a bit of effort on my part to open it properly.

So it must have been one hell of a jump.


My girlfriend has deduced, that maybe he got a fright from the light switching on, because recently I put a cloth over the windows, since it's a new house and we haven't fitted blinds/curtains to the room yet.

She figures maybe it was too dark, and the contrast of the light suddenly going on freaked him out, which made him go a bit crazy.

Thing is he didn't have a mark on him anywhere. In the past he has bumped his head when getting a fright, so I expected to at least see something, but there's nothing at all.



And the worst part is that he only really has that bottom left front part to jump out from.

Which means he would have had to leverage the entire left side section, from that small corner, to manage to lift it and get out.

It's bizarre.


Thing is that is exactly where I would feed him from, thus he knows it's the only "opening", since there's glass shelving everywhere else.

Anyone who tells me that fish aren't that intelligent...I now have news for them.

 

You don't perhaps have a domestic worker coming to clean your place do you?

Also think he could have gotten a huge fright, but if that lid is as heavy as you say it is, I wonder if he didn't have help

 

Nope, we've only been in the house a month or two now...so it's horribly dirty and has no maid

I mean the lid is aluminium, so not dead heavy metal, but still I never imagined the Oscar would be strong enough to manage lifting it and getting out all at the same time.

Clearly that assumption was very very wrong.


Now what really makes me wonder is how the hell Panama Jacks is running an open tank, with their massive Oscar inside it.

 

I'm sorry to hear this, I've kept Oscars and I know exactly what you mean when you say they have personality. I've never witnessed one jump except when mine was being caught at the LFS and fell about a metre to the floor. I'm glad there was no noticeable damage when that happened.

Does your tank have that opening at the rounded end at all times? Also, how big was your oscar?

 

No no, the lid covers the entire area.

I just don't have a pic of the tank with the lid on.

 

I kept my oscars with standard plastic and a custom wood lid (two separate tanks) that was quite lightweight, so I must have been lucky then...

 

Yeah, I even tried to teach him not to jump for food...which he did initially when I got him.

I only ever remember him catching a fright once where he bumped the lid, and then it hardly even made a sound never mind moving.

Clearly he must have been suicidal.

 

When you got home, you didn't notice anything strange with his water? My mind is racing at the moment lol and all these weird idea's are coming to me. I'm just wondering if the heater didn't purhaps go.

 

Nope, checked it immediately.

Water was at 25 degrees, exactly where I had set it.

The Synodontis in the tank with him is perfectly fine, and he's the one I would rather have been worried about getting out...since they can climb up the sides (which I noticed when I moved house, but I figured Plastic container and glass are two very different surfaces to climb.)

 

very sad,my albino catfish shark also died,i couldn't find her this morning but noticed that all my snails had piled up,i picked up the snails and found her dead under them.

 

One of my spiny eels also did a magic trick early this morning. Only found my cat walking with the dead eel.

 

Seems like a bad week for fish.

For me this is just the final disaster in recent times.

First our power was randomly cut, due to the previous owner ordering cancellation without informing us.

Then we had a flood when one of the taps broke off while we were out of the house, resulting in the laminated floors getting mangled (so much for worrying about the tank on them), and then a huge fight with insurance when they initially didn't want to pay out.

Saturday morning I went Skydiving, but found the car with a dead flat tyre.

Fortunately I was able to take the bike, resulting in getting pulled over by the cops on the N7.

Then a sand road with a road bike where I almost saw my ass a few times.

Then we couldn't jump, due to weather changes.

Monday morning I got stopped by the cops AGAIN, in the car this time.

Last night the fish teleported.


And plenty of other crap in between, which I fail to remember now, but I'm sure will reflect on my bank statements if I checked.

 

Ouchies SauRon. Sounds like you've been having some really bad times recently.
I'm sure that'll all change soon though

 

Oh yes, the one I missed was the other car starting to piss oil from the gearbox.

Fortunately it was "only" R600 to fix, which seems like nothing if you disregard the R4500 it cost the month before.

I didn't believe people when they said if you buy a house, it takes 2 years to recover.

It's not the house that you need to recover from, it's all the other shit that happens.

Oh yes, the one I missed was the other car starting to piss oil from the gearbox.

Fortunately it was "only" R600 to fix, which seems like nothing if you disregard the R4500 it cost the month before.

I didn't believe people when they said if you buy a house, it takes 2 years to recover.

It's not the house that you need to recover from, it's all the other shit that happens.

 

Sounds like you've also had a bad week...you have my utmost sympathy! Something must be going on with all this bad luck going on, even the fish are responding negatively to whatever the hell it is. I'm counting on next week being a much better week, I'm sure you'll have better luck as well - fingers crossed.