Inwall75's Shark Resucue thread

In another thread, Inwall75 mentioned some funny shark rescue stories. I was still waiting to hear them, so I decided to start a thread for him ;D

Of course if you have your own shark (or other large aggressive fish) rescue story, please feel free to share. I think it's very important to remind people why they should not put a great white in a beta bowl

In advance, thanks for sharing!

 

I got into this purely by accident. It will take some time to type up so I'll just post each story in a separate post.

 

haha ;D now hows that for shenanigans

 

Seriously though, I am really interest to hear about this. No rush.

 

my dad had a 4 foot long moray eel in a 225 gallon tank and one day i went to see it and couldnt find it. i figured it was just hiding so i gave up. about a half hour later im sitting in this kitchen and i hear a flapping noise on the flor and i look over and sure enough hes slithering his way along the floor. and believe this i put on an oven mit and grabbed him for fear of him biting me and i put him back in the tank and he lived. but later that year we had to sell the tank.

 

Background Info on how I got sucked into all of this. I'm explaining all of this because I don't want anyone to think I made all of these stupid decisions.

Basically, they opened having spent so much making this store gorgeous that it was going to take forever for them to break-even. Basically, if it could have been done wrong, it was. The co-owners of this store consisted of a trust fund kid who had never even kept a fresh-water aquarium. The other owner was very rich and had nice fish tanks at home. However, he just threw $$$$ at it and another LFS is the one who did all of the work for him and his family. The 3rd owner had a lot of experience but didn't have any money. The rich owner that had limited experience intended for this to be an investment and to pop in every now and again and leave the day-to-day running of the store to the poor guy with experience and the silver spoon trust fun kid that didn't have any experience. The rich majority owner one day finally decided that he had spent enough money and they were just going to open up the store finally. There was a lot of strife between them because the person who was doing all the work wanted more money for "behind-the-scenes" things like filtration that he considered necessary and the two "money partners" would say, "No".

Luckily, because of the amount of money they spent, there were a couple of 850 gallon tanks with 150 gallon sumps to be used to display large angels and other large fish. On the tank that involves most of the sharks and batoids, the filtration I inherited was this. Tons and tons of LR, CC substrate, a Seaclone skimmer (no I'm not joking) and a very nice UV sterilizer (I can't remember the brand) that was hooked up to a Mag 18 (no, I'm not joking about this either. Basically they were giving nasty critters a suntan while they were zipped through the UV at roller-coaster speeds). The whole store was filled with de-chlorinated tapwater so I'm sure you can imagine what the tanks looked like right after cycling.

The poor partner's contract was written up in such a way as that he received a minimum salary and a bonus structure that meant he was NEVER going to get the monthly bonuses. He worked open to close, trust fund kid worked 3 to close, and majority owner basically made all decisions by the phone. Because the poor owner was on salary, he was probably making $1/hr. One day something happened (and I don't know what) and poor co-owner locked up and walked out the door.

RING, RING
"Curt, I need you to go down and run my store"
"What????"
"I need you to go run my store"
"M quit and left. R is on a 2 week vacation in Ireland. I'm in Michigan. I need you to open up tomorrow and run my store"
"I don't even have a key. I can't open the store."
"My wife will bring you a key."
"I don't know your wife"
"She has red hair. If you meet her at 8:00, she'll give you the key"
"I don't know how to work the alarm".
"She'll show you".
"I don't know how to work your register"
"You're an accountant, you'll figure it out"

I truly should have looked at this situation and run but I don't have to work many hours during the summer and was bored so I accepted.

 

Fun, lol ive had to run a LFS here but i knew how to work everything b/c i was usually there for hrs helping catch fish, put orders away, etc.. but i was never just thrown into it! lol im interested on hearing some more, these are pretty good lol

 

The Story of the First Batoid

I had been spending every waking hour getting filtration on all of the systems, fixing plumbing mistakes, fixing electrical mistakes meanwhile handling all customers. (Remember, the only other employee was a rich co-owner that had never once run an aquarium. He was back from Ireland but still only worked part-time because he had school all day).

A shipment came in that had the biggest box you've ever seen. Two people could barely drag this box. I wasn't doing ordering at this time so I didn't know what was going on. I said to SS (Silver Spoon trust fund idiot). He said, "This is my bat ray. S told me I could have a pet at the store. I saw these on the supplier list and this is going to be my pet. : This tank had a boatload of LR. I hadn't built the QT warehouse at the time so my only choice was to get this puppy into one of the 850 gallon tanks. Even being a large tank, it didn't have the room to swim freely because of all of the LR. Additionally, the CC substrate is not appropriate for batoids.

This was just a baby at this point and an 850 was too small. The whole next day, I moved most of the LR from the DT to the sump. I put in an order with the supplier for a VERY large amount of sugar sized sand. When it came in, I siphoned out all of the CC and replaced it. I didn't have signing authority on the checking account yet and MB (Money-Bags) wouldn't return my phone calls so I opened up every single skimmer that was inventory in the store and dropped them into the sump as a temporary measure. This bat ray got skinnier and skinnier. I could get him to eat but not enough. He was still growing but it's easy to tell when something is wrong. I had to do hours upon hours upon hours of research. Once I felt I knew enough to be dangerous, then I started contacting people that I've met over the years and played address book bingo for help at saving this poor critter that DID NOT DESERVE THIS just because there are stupid people in the world with money.

I had to get into this tank every morning and force-feed him for a while. Google batoid jaw strength and you'll see how dedicated I was to get this puppy strong again. He could have easily crushed every bone in my hand.....even by accident. Finally, one of the marine biologists who helped me, called me and said that he might have a much larger home for my bat ray. I was THRILLED!!! We were working out details and arrangements. The next morning, I opened the store early like I always did to make sure it got fed.

IT WAS DEAD!!!

EDIT: Obviously, this wasn't one of the "funny" stories.

 

thats the most depressing story!!

 

you have to tell about shark-bite boy Curt! Along with the frogfish incident...... those are funny!