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just did the yearly cleanout of my 6 foot tank - had to catch all the fish including my tribe of sterbai. unwittingly cornered one of them in the net, where it promptly drew blood with its fin spine on the tip of my index finger - and boy-o, did it sting!! felt like there was a poison in it for about ten minutes, bled like a stuck pig, then eased off. amazing that such innocuous looking little fish have such a fiesty weapon! any other spiking stories?

Yep, it hurts a lot.


Working at an LFS, I've been stabbed by about 30 different species of catfish, and I have scars to prove it. Everything from corys to pimelodids and even channel cats.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

yup, ive even been stung by dead feeder comets!

With my new job, I've been stabbed by only a clown loach and a bristlenose so far. I'm sure that there will be more wounds to come, though...

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Evidently, my fish hate me-- or at least my hand. Everytime my hand goes in a betta tank, the bettas attack my fingers. No big.

The larger cichlids in my cichlid tank feel like pinches when they bite.

When I was cleaning out my tank once, the lights were off on the tank, and I was groping around for a rock that I lifte dup to clean beneath, and instead, grabbed my bichir by the face-- and he let me know his displeasure! ]:| It bled and hurt and not even a bandaid made it better.

Another funny story was when I was taking everything out of my tank to move it to another tank. Well, my boyfriend and best friend were helping me. They were taking out a big chunk of driftwood. Once it was out of the tank, I realized, and said "Oh, make sure the pleco isn't on the wood!"

Thunk.

Sure enough that bugger was flopping on the floor. In a panic, I grabbed him with my hands. I hadn't realized plecos had such painful, strong stickers!! I have a scar on my hand to this day.

On occasion, I still get pricked by my larger plecs, but I've found if you restrain them by the pectoral fins, you'll get off relatively scratch free and the plec will be less stressed.

When i had to move my 55g tank, and when we were taking gravel out of the tank, i accidently touched my pleco (there wasnt much water in the tank BTW) and he flipped out, and flung around all over the tank, and he was spinning in circles like alligators do when they catch something, and my hand was all cut up.

That's funny because I just had to clear my 75 gallon out of all of it's ornaments to catch 3 sterbais to be transplanted to a new corydoras sterbia species only 29gallon tank. The big one was quite a hassle, but fortunately I wasn't injured.

My bristle nsoe are little darlings! I have patted them lots of times and they don't even try to flair their spikes at me!

Do Panda corys spike?

All catfish have spines on their dorsal and pectoral capable of delivering a painful jab...

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

yeah, it's a good defense mechanism. I got a good up-close look at my syno eupterus' fin spines when I was transferring them recently. They're quite sharp and have little spines sticking off the back of them in the fin. Fortunately for me neither of them got me (close though). Unfortunately, the little one got stuck in the corners of the bag I was using to move them twice. Really bad the second time even. Poor little guy got his fins skinned from it. Maybe if he stabbed me instead he wouldn't have been much worse off for it. Oh well, he seemed fine in the new tank so I think he'll be alright.

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