Monday, March 31, 2014

Disastrous Decorations

For St. Patrick's Day I decorated my tank with a castle house decoration in my 45 gallon tank.  The decoration had two swim through holes and was hollow. The swim through holes were smaller than my goldies in the tank and the edges weren't sharp enough to snag really delicate material so I didn't think it would be dangerous to put in my tank.  

After St Patty's day ended, I removed the fake pot of gold and round green marbles  from my tank. I really liked the castle house decoration because it added a whimsical touch to my aquarium and had decided to leave it in my tank.  

It had been over three weeks with the castle house decoration and no problems...

When I woke up this morning and turned the lights on my tanks I noticed that my 45 gallon tank looked emptier than usual. Being that it was morning and I am not a morning person under any circumstance, it took me a while to realize that I was looking at a tank with three fish (Sparrow, Armani, and Jimmy-Bean) swimming around when I should have been seeing four goldies swimming. Willow, my red and white Oranda, was missing.  

Instant panick. As my morning brain started to clear in its panicked state, I saw a tail sticking out of one of the swim through holes in the castle decoration.  My heart started to sink.

I started to lift the decoration, anticipating that Willow was surely dead, when she started to thrash. Operation house extraction commenced.  She was so thoroughly wedged in there that I had no choice but to hold the decoration still and wait for her to stop panicking. I took a firm but gentle grip in the middle of her tail fin and pulled her backwards. She immediately swam away from the decorations. A few of her scales were lost but she had no open wounds or sores. I was relieved that she made it out alive and with little damage. I think she might have a permanent scar where some of the scales were scraped off.

I immediately tossed the house decoration in the trash.  No decoration is worth the life of one of my fish.