A Tiger in the Tank

After a number of months with only one very boring resident in our 20-gallon aquarium, Hiromi headed for the pet department at Wal-Mart looking for interesting fish. It was a beautiful day and, at 11:30 AM Hiromi had just finished an 8-hour stretch of overtime hours. Stoked by all these good vibes, Hiromi decided first of all that he would look for a more handsome fish to replace the Plecostamus, AKA "Mr. Cleaner Upper"--the aforementioned previous boring (and very ugly) holdout aquarium resident. It was even uglier after it died, although it moved only slightly less than before.

So Hiromi showed up on Saturday afternoon with several fat, water-and-air-filled plastic bags containing live fish. In one of the bags, a hyper-active silver and black catfish rocketed around, bumping into the sides of the bag, and slicing the water into figure-eights. This was the new "Mr. Cleaner Upper."

The aquarium underwent a major purge, and afterward all the fish in turn got dumped into the very clean water. The catfish kept racing around while we watched and laughed at the contrast between it and the former Mr. Cleaner Upper. He kept it up all weekend.

Besides Mr. Cleaner Upper there were three tiny Neons, two Tetras, three Fancy Guppies, two tiny bright yellow and two red fish that would have glowed if we had shined black lights on them. Throughout the weekend, they enjoyed their first meal and we all kept careful tabs on the behavior inside the tank. On Monday morning Hiromi reported, "They're still all alive. I'm glad. Often we lose a few right after we get them." (In spite of having done a lot of things wrong, I thought--not allowing the water to cycle before adding fish, adding too many fish at once, learning about which kinds were most likely to be compatible with each other, etc.)

I kept checking on the aquarium periodically throughout the day on Monday and noticed that the catfish had become very sedate, lurking quietly now at the bottom in one of the back corners of the aquarium. Hmmm. Was he sick? I admired the other fish, thinking wryly that they were probably all relieved that the catfish had finally tired and was giving them a bit of peace.

Those tiny fish fascinated me--the Neons, and the red and yellow fish. Wait. Where were they? One yellow, one red, and one neon. They're schooling fish and always stay together. Had a few of them died? I checked for floaters or sinkers. Were they plastered against the recirculating tube in the back of the aquarium? Not there. Not anywhere. That catfish. . . .Could he have . . . .? His lurking began to look a lot more sinister than tranquil. I'd head for the bottom back corner too if I had just eaten one red, one yellow and two neon fish.

I looked it up on the internet and found that any catfish with its mouth at the front rather than on the underside of the head is indeed known to eat any fish small enough to fit into its mouth.

I reported him to Hiromi as soon as he got home. "OK. That's it. I'm going to get rid of him."

"What are you going to do with him?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe I'll just throw him out."

"At least put him in the stock tank. He can't eat those goldfish."

"OK. Can you help me here, Grant?"

"He looks fat," Grant observed.

Hiromi caught him with a strainer and took him to the tank in a bucket.

Today Hiromi came home with more fish. "At the store, there was a sign on the catfish tank that said 'This fish may eat little fish.' "

"You didn't see that on Saturday?"

"No. Takes too much time to read all those signs."

"Looks to me like it would be cheaper though."

"I'm going to wait a while to get another Cleaner Upper."

At least that will have been done according to proper aquarium protocol.

We have three new Mickey Mouse fish, one new Tetra, and three new Neons--all of them thankfully out of the reach of that handsome predatory Mr. Cleaner Upper, who is probably at this very minute rooting around in the slime at the bottom of the stock tank. Ha. Serves him right.