My favourite flavour of jelly: Lophiosilurus apurensis!

[Cal Amari]

"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". "

That's exactly how I feel about my wifes cat, and he about me!

 

[jjohnwm]

I like lumpy.

I do too. Sadly, I can guarantee that he doesn't feel the same about you or me or anyone else.

 

[DawnMichele]

I like Lumpy. He's cool.

 

[jjohnwm]

I am thoroughly bummed out.

Last Friday, I fed the apurensis cat as usual; he seized the rear half of a frozen/thawed mackerel with his usual gusto and gulped it down. I then sat down in front of my goldfish tank to do a water change (valves and pumps, no actual work involved) and make a few phone calls. An hour or so later, I was done, stood up to leave...and spotted the catfish lying uncharacteristically in the open on the bottom of his tank. Just didn't look right...checked more closely...and he was stone dead.

l literally could not believe my eyes. I went so far as to leave him untouched, in case he was in some sort of stupor and might recover. He had no outward signs of damage or trauma, but was simply completely unresponsive. I tested the water, something I don't do often, and found all readings as expected; nitrates were about 5ppm, temp. 75F, ammonia/nitrite undetectable. He had a roughly 90% water change three days before...just like all the numerous other near-total water changes I have done throughout his life with me. Nothing was done differently, all conditions, parameters and other factors very typical.

I was in such complete disbelief that, after moving him back and forth in the water to ensure that oxygenated water was reaching his gills, I simply left the room. Checked several times over the next 30 minutes, but it became obvious that he was gone; within an hour he was beginning to bloat and floated to the surface, belly-up.

This fish wasn't a pet... he was a fish. Heartless fiend that I am, I don't "love" my fish; I respect them as living creatures but there is no emotional attachment as would exist with a dog, a cat, a bird. But, wow...I was and am so pissed off that I avoided even posting till now. I had him for less than 4 years; my only other experience with the species was an individual that I kept for over ten years, and who went on to live with a couple of other keepers for something like another twenty years. This guy was, if not a baby, still a very young fish. I measured his carcass at a hair over 21 inches, a bit bigger than I would have thought. Didn't weigh him, but he was neither obese nor thin; I feed well but don't "power-feed" and don't strive for maximum growth in minimum time. He "seemed" perfectly healthy...and went from acting perfectly normal to being stone dead within the span of an hour, and possibly much less.

I did a quick-and-dirty necropsy, pretty much the same as if I were gutting the fish in preparation for cooking. Couldn't see anything that my untrained eye recognized as a problem. If this were a fish I had caught and planned on eating, I would have said he was perfectly healthy and perfectly edible. Buried him in the corner of the yard; not a funeral, just an attempt at recycling without risking contamination of the environment with exotic pathogens.

Totally. Bummed. Out.

 

[Chet E.]

Yep. Sorry. I know the feeling.
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In July I lost the rest of my favorites due to a move across town. At least the cause was more apparent. Their necropsies await as I would like to know their gender and anything else I might learn.
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I have enjoyed this thread a lot. Thanks.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Hey JJ, sorry to hear. I've only two thoughts for now -

1. something was up with that mackerel (loaded with potassium cyanide, or formalin as a preservative, or who knows what? Some marine fish consume or accumulate some poison, like in a red tide, before they are caught and sold for food I heard) or

2. that this was just its time, like a vessel burst in the brain or a heart attack. This is too sudden and unexpected, it seems, to be anything else.

 

[Conchonius]

Sorry to hear about Lumpy. He, alongside Mr. Wels and the late Brick, was one of the fish that I came to know by name while I was lurking the forums. A local legend, if you will.

I agree with the guess about bad luck being the killer. Sudden death with no prior decline in health points towards the fish just having been dealt a bad hand in life... then again, you helped him make the best out of it, and that counts for something.

 

[jjohnwm]

Thanks, folks. The mackerel were just added to the cat's diet within about the past month and a half; I found them being sold for human consumption at a Supercentre. By the time I learned about the surprising difference between Atlantic and Pacific mackerel regarding thiaminase content, I had already repackaged them and discarded the original wrapper, so I couldn't be sure which they were.

Now, I am at least as likely as the next person to second- and third-guess myself in a situation like this, but I just don't think that those mackerel were the cause of this. Within those six weeks, the catfish greedily devoured only two mackerel, one whole and another cut in half and spread over two feedings. In each case the fish was stuffed with a dozen or more Northfin carnivore pellets; gut-loading the dead, so to speak.

The mackerel were, like everything else, attacked and devoured with extreme prejudice and gusto. The belly bulge after the first mackerel was a little too big for comfort...my comfort, not the cat's, as he was still lurking at the surface waiting for more. Mackerel are a pretty stiff, rigid fish, which slowed down the swallowing of the whole one and created quite the beer-belly...or mackerel-belly...on the cat. That took a couple days to subside, and convinced me to feed the remainder in halves.

I can't convince myself that a total of two mackerel, stretched out over 6 weeks of time, killed this cat without displaying any signs of ill health before death. Those two fish probably represented 25% of the cat's diet during that time period; that's pretty high, and I was thinking about quartering the fish to be able to reduce the amount per feeding, but that would have impacted my ability to stuff them with pellets. Still, that leaves another 75% of his intake continuing as pellets, DIY gel slabs and other items he had been eating all along.

Again...the fish looked and acted 100% immediately before he went straight to 0%. If you keep fish or any other animals you develop a feel for their behaviour and can spot any changes quite quickly, even if they seem subtle or difficult to describe; you know if something just doesn't look and feel right. There was not a trace of this. He just died...poof!

I have known several aquarists who lost fish "suddenly" and were at a loss as to why. In some of those cases, I had seen the fish in question several times during their tenure in these folks' tanks, and was often surprised how long they lived; they looked like hell, and slid...quickly or slowly...into oblivion. That was not the case here.

I think that Viktor's explanation...that it was just "one of those things"...seems most likely. Am I rationalizing? I dunno...maybe. Over the years I have lost a few other fish this way, with no immediate and visible cause.

It happens with people sometimes; a person who seems perfectly healthy keels over dead walking down the sidewalk, or sitting in an easy chair watching TV. As much as we like to think we know about fish, it's nothing compared to our knowledge of human physiology...but those people are still dead. I guess it's reasonable to expect the same thing to happen with other animals from time to time.

Whatever; I'm still PO'd.