The first 48

[GaryE]

I have a murderer in my fishtank. A serial murderer. And the local detective is not doing well...

I have lost four macullochi rainbows and one large tetra to sneaky attacks. I see no aggression, and only the last corpse showed a bite to confirm that I did not have a really weird disease issue in my 120 gallon. I hated being patient with the losses, but you have to know what's wrong to deal with things effectively.

The logical culprit was a large duboulayi rainbow - a male on his own as I grow out a dozen or so young of this generally easy going species. I lost the rest of his age group in the weird parasite epidemic that hit my tanks after a fish club auction last winter. I figure since these dead were either rainbows or rainbow shaped, and smaller tetras in the tank were unbothered, maybe we had a dominance thing gone awry.

I moved him out of that tank into my 'so you can't behave, eh?' tank. He's not going to kill anyone in there. Sometimes big male rainbows can break the rules and become aggressive - I have had M trifasciata go over to the dark side before. So far, I can say that the tank seems way more relaxed this morning. The younger rainbows are all shoaling and grazing out in the open, and I seem to have more fish in there than I am used to seeing at any given moment. So I guess it is all adding up via subtraction.

I have to wait a week to see. Is there an unexpected psycho lurking in the shadow of the weeds? Or is our crime wave over?

To be continued...

[charlie1]

Nail biting stuff Gary, can`t wait to tune in for the next episode.
I think the Detective is on the right trail

[hello_rockview12]

Haha, I love this...not the losses of course but the comical approach to the tale. "Oh so you can't behave, eh?" lol. That'll learn em real good.

[Fores41]

Hope you caught your killer and enjoyed your narrative

[Shell]

Oh my, I do hope that you have the right suspect in custody. So sad to hear about all of those losses

[Dan_R]

Awesome post.
I'm sorry about the fish getting killed, I hope he was your guy

[GaryE]

The lights were on in his eyes this afternoon, and I couldn't see his arms - he was like those guys in the TV interrogation rooms who try to hide inside their t-shirts. The sp Morehead and the dominant kamaka rainbow have both tried, but he won't open up. He hasn't said a word.
Maybe he's innocent. I don't think so, but he hasn't blinked.

Something looks fishy here, but the scales of justice will decide. The macullochi he may have murdered had lovely black markings, but were small. He's in with my big male boesemani now, and he'd better not try any thug life nonsense there. He 's gonna learn that in a boesemani tank, orange is the new black.