| Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI |
| Questions and Answers | |||||
Continued from page 2Part V Well OOP is certainly a gourmet diner. In the afternoon he actually ate Sliced Turkey breast bits! Seems like OOP will eat just about anything put in the tank, including plastic strips
. Of course those he spits out rather quickly. Maybe I will take him to Jaques in the Box (that famous French Restaurant one of these days ...) My only concern with scraps such as roast beef and turkey is the animal fat in them that fish do not digest well but just a little should not harm. I was actually more interested in seeing whether he would eat it or not, and he sure did. Caviar I will not try
. I am sure he would jump out of the tank to get hold of the container! Today back to shrimp or scallop depending on what I can find.
Last night I found him "asleep" and dreaming! He was wedged in between two rocks and even after switching the lights in the tank back on he did not seem to want to wake up. Those dreams about caviar I guess. He did wiggle somewhat but no way of getting him to come out. Hey, when I am in a deep sleep I don't wake up for sudden light either.
He found a rather large hermit crab (maybe close to an inch) and he is getting very very frustrated about this as he cannot get to it. The Hermit hides in his shell as soon as OOP gets close. So what do you think OOP does? Well he gets real upset and kicks that hermit around like he was playing soccer. That thing flies all over. Fortunately OOP gives up after a while and the hermit can then get back to its usual stuff, eat algae and whatever else it can find.
Believe me this a "trip" to watch.
When OOP is hungry he starts to search the tank meticulously to see whether he missed anything that is edible and becomes very active. Right now he is on a search expedition but has not found anything yet.
Funny thing happened though: some shrimp meat got stuck to the intake of the powerhead strainer and when OOP discovered it, he started to pluck the bits and pieces off one by one. Gee, a new method to keep the intakes clean I had not though of yet. Guess it takes "brains" to come up with those ideas (or maybe an empty stomach).
He loves little crabs too but I do not have any in the tank and have not found any live ones yet, except at AWC when I was there, and I fed him two of those and after playing with them for a while, OOP proceeded to devour them and tear them apart. Nothing left. Could not find the shells either. Guess I will have to check out some pet stores and see if I can find any.
I have some some snails in the tank as well and OOP does "not" like them crawling up "his" glass. He will let them go up maybe a few inches and then just knocks them off. He can't eat them either because they are too large for his mouth and those two razor sharp little teeth up front don't seem to do it, however hard he tries.
OOP often comes to the surface and goes around to see if anything "interesting" is floating there. I guess in the process he must swallow air because when he goes back under the water, he starts to release air bubbles (from the mouth ... of course ...)
Yes, I know what you were thinking. If that was the case I would not have called him OOP but OOPS, pardon me, a reverse end flatulence
. OOP is very nosy. And that is an understatement. Anything that is close to the tank or comes close to it as to be inspected from as close to the glass pane of the tank as he can come. The back of this tank is actually close to my wife's desk and she has one of those "mobiles" on it. Anytime I make that thing move and rock, OOP is there watching with great interest and gets all antsy shaking and wriggling and trying to attack it. Well good thing the glass is thick enough as on one occasion he banged in it so hard I looked sideways to see what was going on.
Although he really is a peaceful fish, watch out! He is peaceful when he wants to be. Movement around the tank or anything in the water that moves brings out his other side: he is a killer! But, then, we have to be understanding. After all he "is" a trigger and not a docile little mandarin fish.
Right now he is inspecting, well maybe that is an understatement, the overflow and see if he can get it rearranged and move. It does not quite push it but it sure looks as if he would if he could. It's in a corner and I think he wants that corner for himself, but then he would really like the whole tank for himself and anything in it seems to be interfering with that so he does his best to get rid of it.
I have not seem him dump rock out of the tank yet, maybe I should get him a little crane
Well so much for this update, more to follow as OOP always has or does something funny or odd to talk about.
Part VI In my continuing pursuit of finding out what OOP really eats I decided to experiment with some more exotic foods. Why. Well just in case I run out of shrimp or scallop or mussel.
So around 14:00 I fed him some German Potato Salad: a little piece of potato on the end of a toothpick. Well, all Germans should be proud
OOP devoured the potato and went for seconds and thirds. No, of course I am not going to feed OOP potato salad all the time. I just wanted to get a better idea of how diverse their diet can be and so far I have not found anything he does not eat.
I had some Sera-Nip tablets, the ones you press against the glass and they remain in place so I decided to try those around 16:30 and see what would happen.
Talk about a riot! Here is OOP with his small mouth and tiny puny little teeth trying to pry off the food from the thin round tablet. What do you think happened?
Well given enough time, OOP figured it out. Instead of going for it from the front, go for it from the side and knock it and keep knocking it until the tablet fell off. Now the job was easy, just bite into it and follow it moving around on the bottom of the tank.
Once he had it dislodged it took all of 30 seconds to eat the whole tablet. Guess Sera did not know that yet !! Maybe we should email them that we found a new trigger food
Fun aside, OOP is a wonderful fish to own. Clown triggers are known to behave in odds ways but it would seem that when they are alone in the tank they act even funnier.
OOP does not take well to sudden temperature changes though. I did a water change and the temp must have been off by a few degrees, really not much, but I could see that he sure did not like it. You will be glad to know that hours later there is no sign of stress or anything else.
Yes, I know you where thinking: parasites and how could Albert do something like that.
Well it turned out that after having the water prepared and ready for the water change, I had to run out on an errand and forgot to put a heater in the bucked so the temp dropped a little (yeah good excuse right). Maybe but true nevertheless.
OOP rearranged all his hermit crab shells nicely, make a stack out of them then swam to the end of the aquarium and made a mad dash for them bumping right into them and they flew all over the place (and no I have not been smoking strange cigars).
That was hilarious to say the least. The reason I happened to see it is because I was watching the tank, sitting sideways from my desk thinking about another article I am writing. Suddenly I saw OOP dash to one end and then back and hit the shells. Maybe he is a bit too active at times. Should look into Fish Prozac maybe
. ADD is certainly does not have. He does not miss anything that goes on. All I need to do to get him to move close to the side of the tank is get up and walk towards the tank (looks like he thinks ... oooooh food coming).
Well sometimes but more often than not I just need to pass by on my way to some other place.
Last night my wife nearly had a fit. She came down to the area where the tank is and the lights had been out in that room for over 3 hours.
She decided to take a look at the tank and see how OOP was doing and gave cursory looks to the other tanks.
Well OOP was lying sideways between two rocks and she was convinced he was a goner.
I was out meeting with some hobbyists who were in town at Jim Weinstock's house (as posted to the list) and so I did not find out until I got back around 11:00. I guess she was afraid to call me.
When I got into the bedroom after having gone to my home office first, she asked me in a sort of laid back fashion "How's OOP?". guessing I think that I was going to tell her the had passed sway and gone to fish heaven.
I said "of just fine, he's asleep the way triggers sleep. The answer: "are you sure"? I looked at the tank and he sure did not seem ok to me.
So I had to explain the whole story to her about how triggers will lodge themselves into a crevice and not move at all and really look as if they had given up. Still she would not believe me. My only answer was, we'll just wait till the morning and you will see.
Of course, this morning OOP was trotting, well sort of, around the tank as usual and minding his own business while being nosy at the same time.
Guess Sarah learned something
. More to follow as OOP comes up with more tricks.
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