Fidel Figueroa (1998-2010)
When I was a kid, my dad bought a new fish for the fish tank. A baby black banded leporinus. They’re supposed to be peaceful algae eating herbivores that don’t bother other fish.
This leporinus wasn’t any of those things. Once he reached his expected adult size he became fiercely territorial and started harassing other fish. Once he got bigger than than his expected adult size, he started eating smaller fish. After a few weeks all of the fish that could fit inside of him were gone.
Realizing that the black banded leporinus was a bad fit for the tank my father wanted, he decided to hold off on buying small fish until it passed away. Leporinus life expectancy is about 4 years…5 if your lucky.
Boy were we lucky. 6 years after getting this fish, he was still oppressing the masses. He had the back corner of the tank all to himself and any fish (even the other big fish) that went near him got their asses kicked. Sometimes he would leave his corner to kill the dissenters. A few times he bit my dad. (A few years later he would bite me too)
He was an oppressive dictator fish that wouldn’t die.
We named him Fidel.
One day, shortly after Mike and I got married, my dad got a 120 gallon tank and decided to switch from fresh-water to salt-water fish. I inherited his 20 gallon tank (along with Fidel), and integrated Mike’s fish into it.
Fidel killed all of Mike’s fish (except for Clive who had a good 2 year run)
Last week, 12 year old Fidel picked a fight with a 4 year old plecostomus (Plekky) and sustained some injuries to his jaw and tail. Most of the scales on the back 1/4 of his body were gone and he was bleeding. He’s had worse injuries in the past- Like when he jumped out of the tank and landed on the floor- or when a rock fell on him-I applied medication and put water conditioner in the tank to prevent infection but he too old and just didn’t make it. This morning he was dead.
My medium sized fish and the people of Miami rejoice.
I’ll miss Fidel, his attitude, his totalitarian personality, and the way he would eat all the food in the tank. He didn’t take shit from anybody and he stuck around for 3x longer than the experts said he would just to prove he fucking could.
His body is in an iphone box in the freezer awaiting burial tomorrow in my parent’s backyard on Staten Island.
