I have to consider my Coris gaimard (Yellow Tail Coris) a very lucky fish! Early last week he jumped into one of the overflows on my 120 tank, never a good thing but especially not so when a fish is 7” long and a solid three quarters of an inch thick! It was stupid & surprising.
Stupid because I'm not entirely sure why he did it. My guess would be he was trying to catch a tiny fly (I have had an issue with these little flies since a recent flood in my basement- not tank related - and heaven forbid he ever miss an opportunity to eat) and A- he didn't notice the mesh screen top (nice that they are so transparent) and B-being a fish, he was clueless that there is no water outside of the tank..to be fair, why would he think otherwise?
Surprising because I would not have thought that he could knock the cover that high into the air (remember how big he is) and get past the gutter guard that I keep around my overflows (to seal off that little half inch area between the top of the overflow and the screen covers), and actually land in the overflow and not behind the tank (I shudder to think about that…)
Has he not read MR that he doesn’t know that I am the biggest proponent of tank covers? That I have allowed myself to be videotaped (argh) showing how to build these things? (that is a sticky in the DIY forum btw…)
Stupid fish.
Oh yeah, here’s a pic of him, just so you know how big a fish we’re talking about...and why I oh so do not want to lose him…
I needed a plan to get him out of the overflow as he is the type of wrasse that likes to bury in the sand bed at night, so he wasn’t going to last very long in there, never mind the tight quarters.!I tried netting him but the durso was in the way and I couldn’t pull it out as the overflow would have totally drained and I had no way to reach down 24” to the bottom of it to grab a squirming fish. Scare tactics didn’t work to make him jump back into the tank, so I just decided to feed him in there while I came up with a Plan B. ‘Fishing’ for him was considered but I didn’t have the heart to put a hole in his face, so that was reduced to Plan X.
After nearly squashing him umpteen times while blindly fishing with the net in the overflow for the first few days I then decided that if he got in there, he could get himself out of there. Ok, I really had an very busy weekend planned and decided more extreme measures like removing the canopy to get more room to maneuver would have to wait until today.
I knew there wasn’t really a way for him to jump back into the tank with the screen cover back on there and removing it wasn’t an option since there was a good chance if he jumped again, he would not necessarily (or likely) land back in tank, add to that, I do have other fish that are known jumpers like my Blue Spotted Jaw fish, and I certainly didn’t want to lose him too.…so a new idea was formed..I needed to find a way to safely give him jumping room that would MAKE him land back in the tank..if he chose to jump again…
This ugly thing was born…
I found a 1 x 4, a handful of L brackets a few screws and some mesh (imagine that, right there at my house! Lol) and in 10 minutes I had an extend-a-cover, with the space needed for a crazy fish to safely jump and at worst land back in the overflow but chances were good if he did jump, he might just land back in the tank!
…oh, and duct tape, a good plan MUST have duct tape involved somewhere
I put it on there and …nothing happened. It made me feel a little better over the weekend, but I needed a new plan. :sigh:
On Sunday before I went out for the day I put Plan B into effect -- the B stood for bait
I thought that if he jumped to get a fly (food), then perhaps he would do it again. I was feeding him during his time in there, but being a Yellow tail his genetics told him that he was to hunt for yummy morsels every second of every day, so I took a little flake food (he will eat anything..) and put it on TOP of the cover to tempt him. I had been
checking him with a mirror a few times a day to see if he looked ok, and he was happily eating whatever food I dropped in there, but this was going to be a long day and the plan was simple enough.
I came home Sunday night and went straight to the tank (I was not taking all of this well and I admit to being attached to this stupid fish..ok, all of my fish..and did not want to find him floating in that overflow…) to check on him and feed him ..and he wasn’t there. Now you know what this fish looks like, there is no mistaking seeing him, but I had to summons 2 members of my family to look into that overflow to validate my finding that he wasn’t in there.
He wasn’t. Nor was he in the sump, or stuck in the extend-a-cover, or behind the tank on the floor. I looked in the sump again, nope, not there. ( Is any of this ringing a bell with anyone who is familiar with my tale about my once missing McCoskers Wrasse? )
Ok, if he wasn’t anywhere I was looking, he had to be somewhere else. I didn’t see him in his usual sleeping place buried in his sand bed against the front glass…so I whispered to the tank…please let him be here in the morning….
Lucky me, I work from home and my desk is right beside my 120, so up I jumped this morning to be here when the lights came on..still no fish. Sigh.
10:32 AM he appeared. Doing his usual flipping around not 2 feet away from me, asking for his breakfast, as if the past week hadn’t happened at all.
Stupid fish.
I’m glad he’s back :fish:
Stupid because I'm not entirely sure why he did it. My guess would be he was trying to catch a tiny fly (I have had an issue with these little flies since a recent flood in my basement- not tank related - and heaven forbid he ever miss an opportunity to eat) and A- he didn't notice the mesh screen top (nice that they are so transparent) and B-being a fish, he was clueless that there is no water outside of the tank..to be fair, why would he think otherwise?
Surprising because I would not have thought that he could knock the cover that high into the air (remember how big he is) and get past the gutter guard that I keep around my overflows (to seal off that little half inch area between the top of the overflow and the screen covers), and actually land in the overflow and not behind the tank (I shudder to think about that…)
Has he not read MR that he doesn’t know that I am the biggest proponent of tank covers? That I have allowed myself to be videotaped (argh) showing how to build these things? (that is a sticky in the DIY forum btw…)
Stupid fish.
Oh yeah, here’s a pic of him, just so you know how big a fish we’re talking about...and why I oh so do not want to lose him…
I needed a plan to get him out of the overflow as he is the type of wrasse that likes to bury in the sand bed at night, so he wasn’t going to last very long in there, never mind the tight quarters.!I tried netting him but the durso was in the way and I couldn’t pull it out as the overflow would have totally drained and I had no way to reach down 24” to the bottom of it to grab a squirming fish. Scare tactics didn’t work to make him jump back into the tank, so I just decided to feed him in there while I came up with a Plan B. ‘Fishing’ for him was considered but I didn’t have the heart to put a hole in his face, so that was reduced to Plan X.
After nearly squashing him umpteen times while blindly fishing with the net in the overflow for the first few days I then decided that if he got in there, he could get himself out of there. Ok, I really had an very busy weekend planned and decided more extreme measures like removing the canopy to get more room to maneuver would have to wait until today.
I knew there wasn’t really a way for him to jump back into the tank with the screen cover back on there and removing it wasn’t an option since there was a good chance if he jumped again, he would not necessarily (or likely) land back in tank, add to that, I do have other fish that are known jumpers like my Blue Spotted Jaw fish, and I certainly didn’t want to lose him too.…so a new idea was formed..I needed to find a way to safely give him jumping room that would MAKE him land back in the tank..if he chose to jump again…
This ugly thing was born…
I found a 1 x 4, a handful of L brackets a few screws and some mesh (imagine that, right there at my house! Lol) and in 10 minutes I had an extend-a-cover, with the space needed for a crazy fish to safely jump and at worst land back in the overflow but chances were good if he did jump, he might just land back in the tank!
…oh, and duct tape, a good plan MUST have duct tape involved somewhere
I put it on there and …nothing happened. It made me feel a little better over the weekend, but I needed a new plan. :sigh:
On Sunday before I went out for the day I put Plan B into effect -- the B stood for bait
I thought that if he jumped to get a fly (food), then perhaps he would do it again. I was feeding him during his time in there, but being a Yellow tail his genetics told him that he was to hunt for yummy morsels every second of every day, so I took a little flake food (he will eat anything..) and put it on TOP of the cover to tempt him. I had been
checking him with a mirror a few times a day to see if he looked ok, and he was happily eating whatever food I dropped in there, but this was going to be a long day and the plan was simple enough.
I came home Sunday night and went straight to the tank (I was not taking all of this well and I admit to being attached to this stupid fish..ok, all of my fish..and did not want to find him floating in that overflow…) to check on him and feed him ..and he wasn’t there. Now you know what this fish looks like, there is no mistaking seeing him, but I had to summons 2 members of my family to look into that overflow to validate my finding that he wasn’t in there.
He wasn’t. Nor was he in the sump, or stuck in the extend-a-cover, or behind the tank on the floor. I looked in the sump again, nope, not there. ( Is any of this ringing a bell with anyone who is familiar with my tale about my once missing McCoskers Wrasse? )
Ok, if he wasn’t anywhere I was looking, he had to be somewhere else. I didn’t see him in his usual sleeping place buried in his sand bed against the front glass…so I whispered to the tank…please let him be here in the morning….
Lucky me, I work from home and my desk is right beside my 120, so up I jumped this morning to be here when the lights came on..still no fish. Sigh.
10:32 AM he appeared. Doing his usual flipping around not 2 feet away from me, asking for his breakfast, as if the past week hadn’t happened at all.
Stupid fish.
I’m glad he’s back :fish:
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