To find out about the mystery of the fishes, read on.
The two lovely boys above are Raj (top) and Ramses (bottom). We recently purchased them to replace our Gouramis, three of which went sequentially missing.
The first to disappapear was Gus.
He was just plain gone one morning. I checked in all the shells, took out all the rocks, ran my fingers through the gravel, etc. No Gus. The glass lid for the tank has a few cut-outs for the tubes and electrical cords to run through, but none of them seemed anywhere near large enough for a two inch fish to jump through. Additionally, there wasn’t a body on the table or the floor. Lacking any other explanation, we decided he had jumped at just the right angle to get through one of the holes in the lid, and the dog had found the body – and had herself a little crunchy snack before breakfast.
We replaced Gus with George, a similarly marked Gourami.
A few days after we bought George, Gilbert (below)went missing.
I did find part of a body this time. And concluded that the only fish big enough to have done the damage was Cederic, a bristle nose catfish.
We replaced Gilbert with Jim, the light blue fellow on the right.
Bristle nose catfish are not usually carnivorous, but I couldn’t think of any other explanation. So I sequestered Cederic and one morning soon thereafter, on my way into town for the day, I put Cederic in a bag and took him to a fish store to trade him in for some plants. I left early in the day, and didn’t get home till after dark that evening – when I discovered George (who didn’t even stick around long enough to be photographed)was missing.
The only fish left in the tank were three neon tetras and Jim, all of them smaller than George.
The only thing we could come up with after that – was a fishing rat. We have (native) bush rats in our area, and see them occassionally out on the porch. We even caught one in the house once, sleeping on top of the water heater. But we trapped that one, and haven’t had one inside since.
I’ve since cut a new lid for the tank, and this piece of glass has only one tiny hole in one corner. No fish have disappeared since, so we bought Raj and Ramses, two Butterfly Ciclids (also known as Rams) last Friday, and so far so good.