Large Fish Death Question

K

kaledrina

Okay so I'm starting to get into the realm of larger fish and larger tanks and this is such a strange and random question (popped into my head at 3am)... For those of you with large tanks and large fish, for instance larger Niger Triggers, eels, etc...

What do you do when they die? When they're obviously too big to go down the toilet and would stink to high heaven if put in a trash can, burying it can attract unwanted animals and also stink...

Okay I know its random but cut me some slack, its a pretty honest question.
 
Maybe I'm silly and overly sentimental, but I dug a hole in the yard and buried 'em...


(Dug deep enough to discourage any animals from digging 'em up for a smelly treat, of course)
 
*Edit upon sobering up*
Sorry: Didn?t mean to appear insensitive to Brian?s post.

I too get very emotionally involved with my livestock. While these guys are alive I treat them with the same respect I?d show any living creature. I perhaps even get a little carried away with it. To me the captive life we keep are pretty special. These are little ambassadors from the far corners of the world?s oceans, who have come through he$$ and high water just for our entertainment. They deserve the best live we can give them.

But once they die they become just a fish to me. Because I am somewhat obsessed in knowing how to prevent future deaths, I usually dissect the fish that die in my care, then after careful study to find what did them in, I flush the remains. It never bothers me when a fish dies if its demise is natural. When fish kill each other, or eat one another, they go out the way a fish is supposed to die, with their boots on, so to speak. But when a fish dies because of something I did wrong, it bothers me a lot. Jumpers are the worst. So I suppose burring them in the back yard is a noble gesture, especially if the undertaker has a little girl. :wink:
 
i had a 2 foot Arowana die on me and 2 15" rays back when I had freshwater.

in all cases i froze them and waited for trash day.

i was tempted to put their bodies in ant piles to retain the bone structure. would have been cool but the wife didn't agree :)
 
I have a service that will come pick them up.
All I have to do is wrap them up and place them in a plastic container that I leave next to the street at a pre-arranged time. When I come home from work, the container is empty. It is my understanding that they bury the fish elsewhere.




:D
 
Of course, I've only done the burial thing a very few times... Usually when I have a mortality, the clean up crew recycles the remains for me very quickly... As in quicker than I can find the remains and remove them from the system...

But yeah, appeasing the munchkin does have a lot to do with the burials the few times I was able to retrieve remains of a non-flushable piscine pet...
 
I don't know, its just one of those questions thats bothered me for a while. I was assuming freezing for trashday, just can't imagine the look on my dads face if a 8" long reef fish stared at him while he got some ice for a drink..
 
@kaledrina wrote:
I don't know said:
good point... now multiple that surprise factor by 100x and think of how some of our wives feel when they see it :twisted:
Click to expand...
 
I dissect if I don't know what killed, then freeze, then trash day. Fortunately it's really really rare!
 
I just put mine in the flower bed. My bushes seem to grow really well. The smell is never really a problem. I do put them under a layer of mulch. I think there is probaly five or six hundred dollars worth of fresh water fish fertilizer in my bed. Just adding my two cents. I guess I could call it a memorial garden! :D
 
Hey Tri,

Have you ever come home to the smell of a fish fry and look in the skillet and it's a Trigger Fish!! :shock:


:D
 
LOL.


I would love to have a 4' Eel propped up with it's head sticking out of the ice-box.

LMAO.

Talk about laugh riot.


But really, fish emulsion is great for flowering plants.


But if you have bottle rockets around, you could also send them into orbit...
Just a thought.
 
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