Time for another indoor aquatics update! The 190-gal main tank in the living room has fared quite well. In fact, the only real change it’s undergone apart from maintenance schedule adjustments is in the fish lineup. Most recently, we had a murder. But first, a little backstory leading up to it…
We got an Electric Blue Mbuna from one of Michelle’s friend’s about 4 years ago, IIRC. They were moving and could not keep him, so we gladly gave “Flipper” a new home. The only problem was he’s an African cichlid, and our tank has South American cichlids, so they are not exactly compatible. Exactly what that means and how it plays out depends on several different factors, but suffice it to say they just don’t like each other. The tank was lightly stocked and the cichlid population at the time including an Oscar and a Jack Dempsey were all nearly the same size range, so with little recourse I just watched to see how things progressed.
To make a long story even longer, The Oscar and Jack got too big and aggressive, so they were euthanized about a year ago. The Firemouth pair was busily spawning during that time, so there was alot of social unrest, but Flipper held his own throughout. The Firemouth parents also became large and aggressive towards everything else in the tank, so they eventually got the boot, as well. When the dust finally settled at the end of 2017, the fish lineup included 1 Chinese Algae Eater (oldest/original member of the group), 3 Figure-8 Puffers, 5 Pictus Cats, 1 smaller Firemouth of unknown lineage, 11 juvenile Firemouths and Flipper – a quite small load on this tank, with plenty of room for all, you would think. At ~5″ in length, Flipper is actually the biggest fish in the tank at this point and things seemed to have been quite peaceful lately.
But apparently he’s no match for 11 Firemouths less than half his size, because I’m pretty sure they killed him after finding his picked-clean skeleton on the bottom one morning last week. Must’ve been a frenzied gangland-style killing that night, cleaned up by the catfish, no doubt.
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