Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Lucky Mac

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I shared our biggest fish, Big Mac, with you once before. But shortly after that, he got himself in a bind. One morning, we woke up and could not find him. Now come on, it's an aquarium, if he's not on the floor dried up, he's still in the tank. It took some digging but we found him under a shell (no longer in the tank), under sand and buried in the back of the tank.

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Dennis freed him and we thought for sure he was finished. He scraped up both side of his body, this side was the worst.  I lectured him that what comes around, goes around, he's the one who hurt our blue lobster, Harry.

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See, just a little on this side, near the fin.  For the rest of that day and most of the next, he laid on the bottom of the tank in his castle.  He would swim out in a circle every now and then, swimming back into his spot.  I was so scared for him!

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It's been over a week and he's doing great now.  He was back up being himself by the third day and while his side is still healing, he's almost back 100%.  Stirring up sand, it's typical for cichlids to rearrange their environment. Since his incident we have taken nearly all the sand out, most of the shells are gone and we put 3/8" river rock in the bottom of the tank - it's what we normally use, we just tried something different and as Mac can tell you, it didn't work for us.

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The "castle" is his home. He hangs out there a lot. Cichlids love to have hiding spots and get territorial over them. I love it when he slides up and peeks out the top hole. Crazy fish.

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He loves to slide into this shell from time to time.

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I think he has beautiful fins!

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Go ahead, tell him how lucky he was.

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10 comments:

  1. Poor fishie! I've never heard of anyone having to rescue their fish. Generally, they're pretty low maintenance kinds of pets. I love the picture with the eye peeking out of the castle. :)

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  2. That bottom one is awesome...It looks like Nemo.

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  3. Good thing you keep an eye on Big Mac. He's one lucky dude!

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  4. He's a beauty. I hope no infections set in later. Glad he's feeling better. I'd enjoy watching him play hide and peek.

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  5. These are adorable photos, glad to hear he is back to his old fun.

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  6. Wow, great pictures!!! He's a lucky duck (fish?)! Just like having kids -- who knew they could get into trouble in their little fish world?

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  7. He is one very lucky fish! I love the shot of him peeking oUt of his castle.

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  8. Aww. I'm glad he's healing so quickly and yes, he has beautiful fins! He's lucky to have YOU to take care of him Lisa.

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  9. I'm glad he's doing better :)

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  10. I just love your fish pictures....that one of him hiding is just so cute! Fish have their own personalities too and you did a great job of capturing it!

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