Amos is a freshwater puffer fish, a member of the species Tetraodon mbu.
He has been living with us since early 1996, when he was bought from the Guildford branch of Maidenhead Aquatics, which is quite close to me. At that time he measured 60mm long from tip of tail to tip of nose.
At first, he was a very nervous fish (though not jumpy - just shy) and spent a lot of time lurking behind decor and in corners. At no time did he exhibit the aggression and nastiness that his species is supposed to show. Favourite foods were small water snails, though he also quite liked frozen bloodworm and cockles (removed from their shells - his teeth weren't up to cockle shells).
Less than a week after he arrived, he almost died. It seems that, in a spate of shyness, he jammed himself under the tank heater. When it came on he either couldn't get out, or didn't know what was happening, and received terrible burns to his back. For half the length of his spine there was no skin (he has no scales anyway). He sat in a corner of the tank, the skin of his face drawn back in an apparently tortured frown. Fungus set in on the wound, and I thought he would die. He didn't eat for some time.
Eventually, however, he recovered, and the only sign is a not very obvious scar on his back. Most of his skin is rough, covered in little goose-bumps, but the patch where he was burnt is perfectly smooth, and is ringed by a slightly raised scar.
Six months after getting him I set up a new tank, a good deal larger than the first. This was not because he needed more space at the time, but because he will do some time, and I don't think it's right to wait till a fish is badly cramped before increasing its tank. The tank I bought is now my 'showpiece' tank - the one in the living room, and is heavily planted.
The first photos I have of Amos are 18 months after I got him, when he measured 130mm. It's actually difficult to measure him because, although he often sits near the front of the tank, he is strangely phobic of regular geometric shapes. Anything circular (camera lens) or straight (ruler) is almost guaranteed to send him skulking to the back of the tank.
In June 1998 we moved house, and transfering Amos and his tank was a carefully planned exercise. Theres a whole page of pictures, so nothing more to say here.
Soon after the new tank was in place, he did the gruesome snacking-on-his-tankmates episode, about which we have already said enough.
Probably around four years old (I assume he was less than a year old when we bought him), in late 1999 Amos was something like 170mm long (nose to tip of tail). For some reason, he took to digging around this time (a bad habit he still has). This is a bit annoying since the carefully terraced design of the tank gets a battering. The plants are not too happy either, presumably due to the disturbance of their roots - I hope I'll not need to go back to a less planted tank.
In January 2001 fame called. Not content with a simple web-site, Amos hit the print media, when Trends in Molecular Medicine magazine used his photo to illustrate a (short) article about pufferfish genome sequencing (January 2001, Vol 7, No 1, Page 12).
In August 2001 Amos moved tank again, this time to one which is 5'x2' in plan (about 1.5m x 0.6m) and slightly over 2' deep (there's actually about 580mm of water above the substrate). Once again, there's a pictorial account of setting up the tank.
In November 2001, a few short months after moving into the new tank,
Amos died. It was really rather sudden - he went off his food, was a
bit listless for a couple of days, and then we found him dead in the
tank. I really don't know what the problem was, though I've a
suspicion he had some sort of growth internally - there seemed to be
an asymmetric lump on his back.
To comment on anything (please do) email ian.web@astounding.org.uk