Time out for the fish bully!

So, what do you do with a fish who's suppose to be a community fish but turns out to be one big bully!? We purchased 2 of the same as we were told that's the way to do it, by the fish experts of the local pet shop. We had 2 gold fish, one sucker and 2 blue gourami's. All seemed well until the 2 gourami's started to chase each other and didn't seem to like each other too much. Kinda hard to tell if a fish likes another fish I guess except you can definitely tell when they do NOT like each other. Scales go flying, fins get destroyed, etc. Anyway, the one gourami ended up dead in the water one day so we fished him out of the tank and made him go looking for Nemo. Now things calmed down in the tank until Mr. Mean (the other gourami) decided he better let those 2 darn goldfish know who's the boss of this tank. You must know my daughter brought those 2 goldfish home 1 1/2 yrs ago from school one day. They had done some kind of an experiment with goldfish and with parental approval they got to take a couple of them home. We ended up with 3 of them but 1 decided he needed to go look for Nemo so we were left with just 2. They measured about 1 inch and had a gray and white color, these 2 babies have grown into 2 big (and I'm talking 4 and 6 inches) orange beauties. Now the gourami measures about 3 inches I would say but he's decided to take on anything that moves in the tank. We've also gotten another smaller fish, can't remember what kind he is but I must say he's the smart one compared to the goldfish. This little guy hides in a log as soon as Mr. Mean decides to start moving his one-man-troop around! Now the goldfish on the other hand just hang out until they get bitten or pushed by Mr. Mean, then they take off and both of them try to fit into a log that's really made to fit only one fish. A couple of times I've thought I'd had to rescue them as they looked stuck but they managed to get out by one of them backing out and the other one just wiggled his way through the rock pile on the other end. Dumb fish!!!! Sooooo, we had to empty the tank the other day and stuck all of the fish in a 2 gallon tank for about 2 hours until the big tank was up and running again. We kept an eye on Mr. Mean when they were all hanging out in the small tank but they all behaved and did whatever fish do. But then, hoorayyyhhhh did we succeed without even realizing what we succeeded in ... when we put them all back into the big tank Mr. Mean was either in shock or thought he'd been put in time out (with his enemies) and behaved like a good fish should behave! That has lasted for about 3 weeks now and believe it or not ... he's now back at doing what he was doing before, chasing the other fish and stressing them out. I have now threatened him by putting him in with my Beta and see who will win that battle but since I'm an animal lover I just can't do it. But, something needs to get done ... the kid and my husband are ready to flush him down to see Nemo ... not sure if and when this will happen but we got to do something with that darn fish!!!

Fireman rescues Oscar the Fish!

For real ... this is a true story. When we lived in Marshall, Virginia about 7 yrs ago we had a big fantail goldfish called Oscar. He was a silly fish, he used to swim backwards and do flips under and over the bridge we had in our tank. Our tank was located in the dining room so one evening while eating dinner we watched Oscar doing his silly tricks over and under and backwards and there he goes again and again and again. Then he did his usual routine ... sucking the algae off the rocks laying on the bottom of the tank, he liked having a clean house that fish. I wasn't paying attention to Oscar, neither was Sofie or Wade but he certainly was making an awful lot of waves in the tank, more then usual. Sofie, who had a full view of the tank from her seat all of a sudden yelled out, oh no something is wrong with Oscar he's having problems breathing!!! Huh? Breathing??? Wade and I both looked at each other lifting our eyebrows, then looked over at the tank ... so there is Oscar doing all kinds of very strange flips and splashing more then usual. At first we thought he was just craving attention until we noticed his mouth was wide open and I mean WIDE open and it looked all black inside!??? huh???? what on earth is going on with Oscar???? When I looked again I noticed the black thing was actually a rock from the bottom of the tank that looked like it was actually stuck in his mouth!!!! Oh noooooo, what to do what to do???? Wade's firefighter's instinct jumped into action and he calmly got up while I frantically tried to get a hold of Oscar and walked out the room? What the heck???? Waaaaaaaaaaade, I need your help right now ... I didn't want Oscar to die in my hand, well in the net I was holding him in. So, he came back with a set of very long skinny tweezers, the real medical type. He instructed me to grab a hold of Oscar so he could get the dam. rock out of his face!!! Ok Mister Fireman ... it's not that easy trying to hold a 5 inch slippery goldfish still UNDER water to perform surgery. But, I managed to do so with a washcloth and voila ... Wade was able to grab the black rock with the tweezers and it popped out of Oscars mouth who was stressing big time by now! Oh boy, was he one happy fish when that rock came out. Needless to say so where we. Sofie had been watching us giving us instructions (typically her) on how to handle the situation and that's when we figured she'd become a vet some day. She's actually looking to talk to an Equestrian vet in the area to get more information, she figured it will be a lot easier trying to hold still an animal that weighs about 1000 lbs compared to one slippery Fan Tail Goldfish called Oscar!