And the fact Blinky has a screwy eye and drop eye, how did he know that the pond had food?*cough*blame the kids*cough*

Missing an eye, drop eye in the other. Got into a good argument with something before he ended up here.

I knew they could nail things out of the water, but I always thought it was a motion thing more than an ability to identify tasty treats vs not tasty treats.

Senior One Eye, attacks plants, pellets, shrimp, or anything else that goes into the top of the tank in a check to make sure it's food. So long as it's moving, either floating or if I move it.

I had some extra water lettuce from outside that I put in with him. When I put it in slowly, he didn't care about it and left it alone. If I pushed it around some, to get it out of the way he'd try and eat it. Same with when I feed him by hand, if I keep very still he has no idea what's going on, but if I move some, he goes right to where I'm at.

Wonder how your breeding project is goin?

I can't remember if I posted about that here or talked about it in chat.

They went, out the door that is. I had 5, I grew them out to about 6 to 8 or so inches, when the local non-sucky fish store dropped off an Eastern boxie for us to tend too.

Considering what I paid for 'em he made me a deal I couldn't refuse. All 5 of them would have gone actually, but one has drop eye on the one side already, (I think from jumping into the top of the tank) So he ended up staying here.

I'm hoping to try this again in the spring when the babies are in, but I need to get a bigger home situated for the Pacu that are here. They're growing quicker than I expected them too and are getting close to outgrowing the pond they're in. Tempting to see if I can build something where the pacu and a few sliders could peacefully coexist.

I've seen the horrors of what an 18in Aro can do to a turtle (Diamond Back in this case and not here when it happened) so maybe not.

Dang, well, try again and send some down south for free?

We talked 'bout that in chat, saint, but don't recall ya ever mentioning what the aro did to the terrapin.

WYite

Huh. I could have sworn I told you about that one Wyite.

Anyway, there's a fish/pond store near my mom's place but the owner only really knows about koi/goldies/ponds so the few times I was in there I saw some interesting combos. (That's the place where I saw the Skirt Tetras being kept with the 5 inch Sevs)

They got a big display tank (at least 400 or 500g if not bigger), and one of the kids that works at the store, goes to the school my mom works at. He's like 15 or 16 but from what my mom says, he's really good with SA stuff.

Since they already had a fancy goldy tank they told him he could stock that one. The showpiece he picked for the tank was a 18 inch Silver Aro. There were a few other fish, a couple of beefy non aro snack sized cichlids, some silver dollars and a big honkin L numbered Pleco that a customer brought in. From what I was told the tank was running great.

This spring, one of the other girls that worked there somehow ended up with two adult DBTs. The kid knew about what I do from my mom, (thanks to them talking about the Aro) so he was going to get her to call me about picking them up.

In the meantime.. (cue ominous music) the shop owner (while the kid wasn't there) knew that they were aquatic turtles, so he thought he'd better put them in a tank. They didn't have a cycled empty tank, and all the tropical tanks were filled with small and tasty fishies.

You all see where this is going, yes?

He put the two DBTs in the tank with the Aro. The logic being the Aro was too big for the turtles to rough up, and that the turtles are well, turtles and they'd be fine with the Aro.

The next day, there was a very nasty surprise. The kid told me that the girl who opened the store actually threw up.

The left front leg of the smaller of the two dbts was removed from the middle of the leg down and was no longer in the tank, near the filter in the filter or anywhere else for that matter. They said there wasn't any little bits either, like if the cichlids worked on it some. The bite and the breakage looked to be one chomp too so everyone was fairly sure we knew who it was.

The plus side of it was the owner felt absolutely horrible about it, paid for all the surgery and rehab, and set it up in it's own special tank in the store as a lesson to not researching compatible tank mates.

The bad part was, that I tend to name things based on their ailments, so he inherited the name tripod.

Nah, ya hadn't told me that one. Tripod, eh? At least he's gonna be okay and have a long, pampered life from here.

And when I first joined here and showed an interest in turtles, you seemed perplexed why I was more concerned with the turtles well-being than the fish's. Well, now ya know, that's the kinda fish I like.

Turtle-fin soup, anyone?

WYite

Well, that turtle had some bad days.

Not counting in the wild as I'm sure that happens fairly regularly, but I don't really remember any other instances of fish on turtle violence. Usually it's the fish that get the short end of the stick.

The fish probaly loses that end with a snapper.