SimplyOrange

a yoyo loach hid in a hole just big enough for it to get it's entire body in and the hole was under the tree stump like drift wood. i took out the driftwoods and placed it on a plastic rubbermaid cover and siphoned the tank water out. next thing i know the yoyo was next to the stump in a small pool of water and it has been minutes.

Dryn

I don't know but bumblebee catfish are the worse (sorry I don't know the sci. name). I bought one little 1/2" bee cat and put him in a sparsely planted ten gallon tank. I never saw him again. I figured he was a night fish, but never could find him at night. Several times I completely drained the tank and refurbished it. Four years later, I broke down the tank and low-and-behold a 5" bee cat came out of a small piece of driftwood. Aparently there was a crevase underneath the driftwood. He hid there during the times I had the tank broken down. (I put the wood in with the fish in a five gallon bucket).

BryceM

A 5" fish hid in a 10g tank for four years? That beats my story.

Amazon_Replica

He He I can't beat the bee either. I HAD Hornwort in my 125 as I have alot of shrimp in there, and they love to forage in it. But it was driving me insane, grows like psycho. So i grabbed the big bad clump out of there, approx 2-3 lbs. and roughly 20"x20". I checked it thoroughly for shrimp, and tossed it into my 55gal. Which only has a 14" Pleco in there.

Long story short, about a week later I went to look at the pleco, and he was on his back, upside down under a rock, not moving. Not that they move alot in light, but he wasn't moving his mouth, in fact his mouth wasn't suctioned to the rock. I was like oh no, the hornwort killed my pleco, and I was on my knees staring at the pleco, and a skirt tetra swims past and im like wtf, i had skirt tetras in the 125 like a year ago and thought they had all died, ( i got suckered into buying a bichir, yea they're friendly).

The pleco isn't dead just lazy and now has a little friend. I will have to get a few more skirts now for his company but i thought that was cool.

Adragontattoo

At Aquafest2007 I picked up a pair of Montezuma Swordtails among some other fish.

Both went into the 55 holding tank until I decide where they shall live permanently. 2 weeks ago on a Sunday I decided the 55 had been uprooted enough by the angry syno. and culled a bunch of the various Val I had in the tank.

All of that went into a fishbag which I had laying on the floor.

Flash forward 5 days, I laid down to watch the 55 for a bit while I was waiting for to something to happen (forgotten what by now). As I am watching the tank I am mentally ticking off the various fish in the 55 and their conditions.

Both salmon reds check
Single Male Boesmani check
3 no 4 of the baby ancistrus check
paradise fish looking mad check
both flagfish check
female montezuma check
large syno making a pit underneath all the val, *grumble* check
30 mins later hmm no male montezuma....
1 hr later hmm STILL no male montezuma...
start shifting val around to try to spook the male into the open, 30 mins go by STILL no male shows up.

OH CRAP, did I scoop him when I pruned and is he in the bag o plants on the floor?????

Dump bag in 55 assuming I will pull his corpse out of the bag and out comes a slowly swimming, skinny montezuma..

WTF! As of last night the Male is still alive and makes sure to show up when I am around but has become very skittish otherwise.

OR

When I first started keeping fish about 20 years ago I had a 10 gallon tank and for awhile I paid very close attention to everything I could about the tank (I changed the water, I turned the light on and off, I fed the fish etc).

After a few weeks I got off on another "hobby" and forgot about the fish. A few weeks later I remember "OH CRAP THE FISH!" and proceed to run downstairs to be sure I will be cleaning out a foul smelling tank of dead fish.

Lo and behold, the fish had not only lived but had also bred like crazy (danios, and a raphael)..
WOW I bred fish somehow! A water change later, the tank was back to being full and the front glass didnt look like a green mat anymore (yeah I left the desk lamp on for like a month straight).

1 week later the heater failed and put the tank at 100F for a day, cooking everything but the raphael.

Flash forward about 10 years, same raphael in a 55. I pulled out the plastic hollow rock thing to rearrange the tank and do a thorough water change. After carefully inspecting the hollow rock thing(this hollow rock thing was awesome, it was plastic, with little fake plastic plants, and the entire thing was shaped like a cross between a castle, a log and a pile of poo) to ensure that nothing was taking a snooze inside it I pulled it totally out of the tank and proceeded to do a thorough cleaning of the entire tank.

About 2 hours later as I am watching TV I hear a faint croaking noise coming from the fish tank area. After being confused for a few minutes, I went over to inspect the area and notice that I forgot to toss the rock thing back in the tank. After staring at the now croaking plastic rock thing, I decided to toss it back in the tank since some of the fish loved to hide in/around it. Almost as soon as it hit the water, out swims a very angry and slightly irritated Raphael.. That fish would probably still be alive if it wasnt for the 3lbs of pellets that got poured into the tank by my ex fiancees parents when they thought the fish looked HUNGRY.

rs79

Killies are sometimes the ultimate hiders. You take the out of a tank, leave it empty for a while then a few weks later fish appear. Huh?

toxic69

i had a 6 inch clown loach squeeze itself into a tiny hole in a peace of fake drift wood i thort it had jumped out the tank or died or something it wasnt untill i decided to move stuff around one water change that i saw its tail sticking out the hole i managed to get it out thinking it would probably be dead as it had bin missing for a few weeks but it was fine just a bit thinner than befor lol

Prodigal Son

I was moving from one apartment to another and upgraded from a 55 to my 100. I was keeping african cichlids back then, and took all the lace rock out to transfer it. I piled it all in the sink while I was netting out fish to transport them to thier new home. A few hours later I had all the fish moved, the 55 cleaned, and I started moving the lace rock. At the very end, I looked in the drain and saw a 3" marble pleco, which was apparently suctioned onto the rock. I figured it was surely dead after so many hours, so I went to pick it up. I nearly jumped out of my skin when it chirped and started thrashing! The story repeated when I sold the cichlids and most of the lace rock. Turns out the cichlids' new owner has that pleco now because he repeated his hitch hiking habbit.

Then there's catfish, I never know if my bumblebee cat is still around. I haven't seen him in months. There's a baby ripsaw cat in the tank too that finally made his fisrt appearance today after two weeks. I had heard they were voracious eaters, so I was a little concerned at having not seen him. Then of course there's the nano reef. I haven't seen the baby hermit in months, and the neon goby makes a weekly appearance.

apistaeasy

I have around 40 fish in a 13" cube. Any time you approach the tank all 40 of them hide so well that you can't see any of them! I've been asked on more than one occasion "Why don't you have fish in the tank?"

OldMan

My best missing fish story comes from when my children were quite young. I came home from work one day to find one of my guppies missing. When I questioned the kids they finally told me a story about finding a dead guppy in the tank. They had staged a funeral and buried the guppy in a jar in the garden. It was late fall so I was sure that even if the fish had started alive, it had to be dead by then. I didn't want to be digging in the garden next spring and break the glass jar so I had them show me where it was buried. I dug it up from about a 4 inch deep hole that barely covered the jar and looked inside the jar to see a very alive guppy that had been outdoors at less than 50 degrees for most of the day. It was swimming around in the inch or so of water they had put in the jar. I returned him to the aquarium and my miracle guppy, back from the dead, lived on for at least another year.