5 years ago, my wife and I bought an aquarium. It's first resident was an energetic Oscar Cichlid named Maximus Decimus Meridus. He peacefully coexisted with a variety of semi-agressive cichlids and other fish.
Eventually, Max grew to a size where he was able to take on any adversary. He ate all of his tankmates. First, the corydoras catfish, then the bumblebee cichlid. He tore a crayfish limb from limb. He tormented an eel until it hid out inside of a decoration and died. He was a badass motherfucker, for sure.
Eventually, all that was left was Max and a 6 inch plecostomus. These two had been together from the get-go. I had gotten the pleco about 2 weeks after we got Max. I came home to find Max deepthroating the pleco. He had swallowed the pleco down to a good 4 inches. I tried to extract the suckerfish from Max's gullet using a pair of kitchen tongs, to no avail. Max held onto the pleco for 3 days until he had digested the head and shoulders of the victim and was able to release his hold. The corners of his mouth were tore up from the floor up for a week or so after that from gagging on a spiny-finned bottom feeder for 72 hours. That was 3 years ago. From that point on, Max was a lone wolf. He became a curmudgeon and openly resented me, my wife, and our son. I knew that if he got the chance, he'd latch on and strip my digits down to bone. I could see in his eye that he wanted me to switch his diet from pellets to kittens, and eventually, human children. He had a bloodlust... and a mean streak a mile wide. But our relationship was special like that. I'd call him a nasty bastard, but I'd do anything to keep his water at the proper Ph, the right temperature... I'd talk to him, taunt him through the glass, and generally carried on a mano y mano relationship with the Amazonian Murder Fish that was Maximus Decimus Meridus.
Today, December 19, 2009... I killed Max. I didn't mean to. His tank smelled like tranny taint mixed with dead possum. I've done it a million times before. I refill his tank with a few gallons of water to replace that which was lost through evaporation. I took out his filters and put them in a bucket. I then washed his filters with a mixture of hot water and bleach. Yeah, I know it sounds like a dick move... but like I said, I've done it countless times before. I soak them in bleach water and then hand-scrub them and thoroughly rinse them and nothing bad happens. Maybe I missed one... maybe I just didn't rinse them well enough. 4 hours later, Max was dead. Fucking Max. I'll miss you, buddy.
Here is Max in all his living glory:
And here he is... dead. And in a freezer bag:
'
How big was Max? He was a big ole' son of a bitch:
I'll miss you, buddy...
Max is in the freezer in the basement. Next weekend, I will dry him out and pack him in salt. I will then gently lay him in a dish and cover him with polyurethane. He will then live on as a decoration on my desk at work.
