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.
