Trogdor the Ropefish Goes Crazy

A few months ago a friend of mine moved to Vegas. He had a really sweet fish tank that he couldn’t take with him, so he gave it to me.

I got really into it, of course. The only problem was that the fish kept dying. Here’s the graveyard :

1. The cutest little red fish in the world. He was this tiny shy red fish who would always hide. Finally after a month of having him he started to come out of hiding and swim around. To move anywhere he really had to get his tiny little fins moving. I went to Massachusetts to visit family and left the heater in the house set to 70 so that the fish wouldn’t get too cold. I have a little heater in the tank, but I didn’t trust it. Unfortunately there was a heat wave, and when I came back the poor little guy was dead.

2. I had a zebra danio who also got sick from the heat. He had dropsy, which basically means that he kept inflating until he was about twice his size. I researched it online and everyone said that there was no cure. When it was too late I went to the fish store and asked, and he recommended some medicine that might help. I got the medicine, but he didn’t make it. I was really sad because the poor guy had no idea what was wrong. He would paddle all over the place, but had a tough time staying too far down in the tank since he was so inflated.

3. One of my favorite fish was the golden gourami. He was really friendly and would swim up to me whenever I sat by the tank. I even taught him to kiss my finger if I stuck it in the water. One night I checked on my fish, went for a nap, and when I woke up he had jumped out of the tank! There was a tiny little opening… it’s amazing that he got out.

After that I was left with two black tetras, so the tank was looking pretty empty.

I went to an awesome fish store called Aquatek here in Austin. It’s owned by a guy who is nuts about fish and imports all the coolest ones you can imagine. I had some algae growing in the tank so I should have bought algae eaters, but I had my eye on a ropefish. Ropefish are these crazy fish that look likes snakes and are from the Congo. His stock varies every week, and I knew if I didn’t get this guy I probably wouldn’t have a chance to get another one for a while.

Because he looks a lot like him, I named him Trogdor. Normally he hangs out in the back of the tank and hides, or just sticks his head out. Today I cleaned the tank and changed the water, and afterwards he went totally crazy. I took a video of it :

Last week I got three new fish.

1. A red finned shark named Jaws. He’s very tiny and cute, and probably the wussiest fish I’ve ever seen.

2. Two “kribs” which are really beautiful fish. They will hopefully mate and make me a billion little fish. I named them Adam and Eve. The male is a bit of a jerk and keeps chasing around jaws and the two black tetras. For some reason he leaves Trogdor alone, though. Probably because Trogdor even scares me when I’m changing the water and is definitely nuts.