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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
He loves to slide into this shell from time to time.
I think he has beautiful fins!
Go ahead, tell him how lucky he was.
