Lumpy continues to do well; he hasn't made any new friends, which is just the way he likes it. He is temporarily housed in smaller tank, a 2x2x4 foot 120gallon which is a stand-alone unit rather than part of a system. His supposedly permanent home was an oddball construction built to fit under the stairs leading to my basement; those stairs require re-building now as part of a reno of my porch and mudroom. I toyed with the notion of leaving him
in situ but eventually chickened out and moved him. I've damaged tanks before by not moving them far enough away from construction work; not about to take chances with this guy.
Should have taken the opportunity to measure him, but of course didn't. I'm sure he is still no more than 20 inches in length, although he continues to get chunkier. His appetite remains undiminished; if I actually adhered to that old saw about "as much as the fish can eat in five minutes", then this fish would be completely spherical.
In actual practice, it's closer to "as much as he can eat in 5 seconds"!
He continues to keep me on my toes when I work in his tank. I must plunge my hand and arm in quickly and with gusto; dabbling my fingers in the water, or even just lowering them slowly and gradually into the tank, results in an instant bite, usually accompanied by an explosive popping splash as a gallon of water lands on the floor. The trick is to get as much of my body mass into the tank as quickly as possible. Ideally, I want as much
John in the water as there is
Lumpy; when I manage that, he usually just follows me around, hovering an inch or so away and glaring balefully at my hand while I clean algae or whatever else I need to do. I am scrupulous about washing my hands before this job; he has never grabbed me other than immediately when I enter the water, but if I ever had any food odour on my hands it might be different. And I'm here to say that when he grabs you...well, it's not really that painful, often leaves no mark other than a mild abrasion...but I defy anybody not to jump out of their skin when it happens. He's probably had my hand in his mouth a dozen or more times now, and the absolute best I can do is not to make any sound when it happens...but the flinch is uncontrollable and frankly embarrassing; instant adrenaline dump.
Moving him was a piece of cake. I used a rubber-coated landing net, which he made no effort to avoid; actually he swam into it as if he was going to the fridge to grab a beer. Lifted him up, no thrashing, walked across to the temp tank, lowered him in, and he swam out as if nothing had happened.
In the smaller confines of his current digs, he doesn't cruise much; in the larger tank he would go on patrol a few times each day, making sure that everything met with his approval. He had completely destroyed the half-dozen potted Amazon Swords in his main tank, simply by crushing them with his body weight when he came to rest on one. I need to re-think the decor.
Is he a Wet Pet? I dunno; we definitely interact
, but maybe not in the way I would choose if I had my druthers. There is absolutely no part of the fish/human dynamic here that could be described as "affection", and affection is IMHO an integral part of owning a pet. Without it...he's an incredible specimen, a cranky and crotchety neighbour who doesn't want me on his lawn, a link to nature right in my house...but it's kind of hard to think of him as a "pet".
Anybody remember the old TV show "The Munsters"? Remember Spot, the giant fire-breathing dragon that lived under the stairs?
Yeah...it's like that...