A Fish With No Name

I have a story to tell about this catfish.

Back in the winter my neighbor was cleaning up one of her recently vacated rental properties when she came across this catfish. The previous tenants had apparently decided the fish wasn’t worth taking so in an unheated rental unit, it was left to fend for itself in about 3 inches of ice cold water in the bottom of a plastic bowl.

Maybe it’s just me, but I just couldn’t leave it. I adopted the catfish and brought him and a tank that was sitting inside the unit home. The fish was very sluggish and no doubt in shock from the 3 to 4 days in unoxygenated and ice cold water.

It took a couple of days but he finally started eating and coming back around. Now he is as healthy as a horse and actually, for the most part, quite boring. I say for the most part because this story doesn’t end here.

A couple of months after bringing the catfish home another neighbor suggested I get him some company. When I said quite boring that is because he is usually camped right here in this little cave. I thought to myself maybe he would like to have some company. Let me tell you, he liked company alright.

The neighbor has a fish tank overrun with guppies. So to thin the population in her tank and to increase the population in mine, she gave me some of her fish. There were two male guppies, one female, and 4 or 5 baby guppies.

This catfish had a field day with those guppies, apparently at night. I watched them pretty close for the first day or so and then the morning of the second day – the catfish was the sole survivor. There was not a guppy to be found in the tank. None floating or in the filter, he had eaten every one of them.

Needless to say, I have since taken a new appreciation for this catfish. He is not as harmless as he appears. I have not fed him any companionship since.