Incessantly count fish. Anyone else? 🤷🏽‍♀️

[Medkow74]

I count my new fish all of the time. I just bought 6 new Furcatas and two long fin green dragons on Saturday and probably counted them a dozen times. Even though I've been keeping fish a long time it still makes me nervous buying new ones.

[Tanked]

19 hours ago, tolstoy21 said:

Maybe just count dead fish and subtract that number from the total you started with! Dead fish don't move and are super easy to count, and, if you're doing things right, that number will remain zero each day!

Sounds like a plan.  My four missing Danios will live forever!

[CT_]

I got 7 shrimp last Monday and i incessantly count them.  I lost one the first night and pulled the corpse out and have been counting 5 ever since --- multiple times a day; I look at all angles until I can find all 5.  I always assumed the 6th escaped when moving them into my tank.

 

Today I just checked and there's 6!  It's a Christmas miracle.  For the life of me I can't figure out where the 6th could have been hiding.  I don't have any caves.  everything is visible from one angle or the other.  I used my first feeding of bacter ae last night and I heard that can get some shy shrimp out of hiding.  I guess its true!

So there's payoff after all.  If you keep counting you may end up with an extra one day.

Edited January 26, 2021 by CT_
spelling

[Sharon- fishandfloral]

I count every day. 😆 By looking at this thread, I’d say many of us do. I don’t have a massive number of fish or tanks to not be able to do it.

[Nana Finopolis]

Yeah, I count also. What I hate is when I count and discover I'm missing one and can't figure out where it went. I'm missing a rather large cardinal tetra and can't find it anywhere. With so many plants in there it makes it really hard to find a dead one sometimes.

[Theresa_M]

5 minutes ago, Nana Finopolis said:

Yeah, I count also. What I hate is when I count and discover I'm missing one and can't figure out where it went. I'm missing a rather large cardinal tetra and can't find it anywhere. With so many plants in there it makes it really hard to find a dead one sometimes.

Good luck to you! Hopefully it’ll turn up at the next feeding 🙂

[Nana Finopolis]

1 minute ago, Theresa_M said:

Good luck to you! Hopefully it’ll turn up at the next feeding 🙂

Thanks. Yes, I'm hoping.

[Eric M]

Haha, I take a head count at every feeding (also good counting practice for my daughter). Sadly, I even keep a log book of additions/losses to track any issues and water parameter changes, which probably isn’t healthy... can usually account for everyone within a couple days except the ottos. Literally go months without seeing them...

[gardenman]

I'm sorry to say I've got too many fish to count. There are somewhere around 30 Super Red Bristlenose plecos in my big tank along with roughly a gazillion or so neon swordtails. I recently bought twelve ramshorn snails (six red and six blue) and they're in my 10 gallon quarantine tank and impossible to count in there as they've disappeared among the plants. I know the majority are still alive and well, but the tank is pretty heavily planted and they've melted into the plants. I see five or six at a time along with baby ramshorn snails so I know they're doing okay.

The only thing I have in small enough numbers to count is a lone surviving oto cat in my 20 high, but I only see him once every three months or so and then he's out of sight for another three months. I'm always a bit surprised when he shows up.

 

[morphy1701]

I suspect my smaller Yo Yo Loach has found a cave up inside my larger piece of driftwood. He showed up this morning after missing for almost two days. Last night both my wife and I spent a half hour peering into the tank from every angle with flashlights and saw no sign of him. This morning there he was. Sigh... My best guess is the driftwood. There is a small cave opening where it attached to the slate that is it's base but we can see all of that, but suspect it is more hollow than I can see and he gets up in there to hide. Pretty sure they all get a good laugh out of us freaking out.

 

[Tanked]

Floating plants in two thirds of the tank make it hard to count the fish .  When I really want to do a census, I wait until nightfall.  My lights are set turn on/off 5 minutes apart.  The fish will usually migrate to the lit part of the tank.  A few specks of food almost guaranties anything that swims will show up.  Taking a cellphone picture allows me to catch the fast ones.

[Steph’s Fish and Plants]

On 1/25/2021 at 12:58 PM, Theresa_M said:

I cannot believe I’m writing this ... just fed the tank and panda #6 turned up!! I don’t know where he’s been, lol. I guess he came back through the portal! He’s was absent for both Saturday and Sunday meal times. My heart is bursting right now, lol.

I have a blue goby that disappears for weeks at a time and then all of a sudden is just hanging out on the glass. 
 

I also have celestial pearl danios and was convinced I’d lost one bc I could only count 5 for days but #6 has returned from the void (I saw all 6 at the same time).

Every like 15 minutes to every few hours I go to the tank and start counting. Every danio. Ever corydora. And then the 2 new apistos. I have gotten to a point that with the CPDs and the goby if I don’t count all of them I know they’re probably fine because I’ve had them the longest, but the cories I’ve had 2 weeks and the apistos I’ve had 1 so I’m still paranoid somethings going to happen to them. 
 

I feel like as much as it is a curse, it’s also a blessing. The constant need to count keeps me very in tune with my tank and I’ve been able to notice new plant growth and copepods and behaviors among the fish themselves that I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.