I have recently moved, and had to move fish tanks (no losses, yay!) for the second time. It’s an arduous process. And if a director wants something to order, like five tetras, two guppies, three cories a pleco and some danios, or a tank of small sharks and tiger barbs and an Oscar, those and going to be tough, because you have to gather the fish, acclimate them, and with luck gt to set he up where they are needed several days ahead of shooting. More likely, I suppose fish wranglers (people who procure and like creature for a film project are called “wranglers”; there and “butterfly wranglers”) keep several tanks on hand according to demand, and on wheels, but the still weigh hundreds of pounds. Water weighs about 8lbs/gal, so a 40 gal tank, which alone weighs about 15 awkward lbs weighs about 200lbs more with water, fish, gravel and decorations.
Do directors just pick a tank, and it shows up. Do they need cooling under the lights?
Going off at a tangent, and no help at all with the question – but I love the expression “butterfly wrangler”, and the whole idea of same. The sheer incongruity is marvellous !
I’m sure there are aquarium stores where they can pull together a tank in a short amount of time for the right amount of money. For some special thing, I forget what, at a mall, a bunch of tanks–saltwater, freshwater–were set up for the duration of the special whatever-it-was, so obviously there are people who make that kind of thing their business.
Butterfly wrangler tip: If you want it to appear that a butterfly has landed on somebody’s hand, catch butterfly, put butterfly in refrigerator for awhile. Then set butterfly on hand. When it warms up–pretty quickly–it will fly away. Then you run the movie in reverse.
When he was a guest on The tonight Show back in 1979, James Mason described his role in the TV miniseries of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot as a “vampire wrangler”.
If you pay attention to the closing credits in movies, you will see some weird “wranglers”. I’ve seen a movie with “worm wranglers”
It might not be as tough as you think for a few reasons. They’ll probably have multiple fish on hand, so if the fish die in a few hours, they can swap them out. For conintuity’s sake, I’m sure they’d rather not. But how much work do you really put into make sure $3 fish stay alive when you can replace all the fish for $100 more than once by sending an intern over to the nearest Walmart or Petco?
Regarding moving the tanks, from what I recall, when I read some of the fish boards, the trick was to lower the water way down. So you can take a 40 gallon tank and bring it down to 15 gallons and even with all the gravel and decorations in there, you’re probably under 200# with the glass. Add to that designing the tank to be mobile on a set and it should be easy to move. Take the water out, move it, dump the water back in, no acclimation to worry about and no kicking up the sentiment since the tank has only been set up for a few hours/days.
As for cooling the tank, the do make coolers, you can get them online and I think you can even get them from Petco. But I’d be surprised if they’d bother with them on a set. ISTM that the ‘fish wrangler’ could just pull out some of the water and dump in some cool water from time to time.
On top of all this, if I had to guess, I’d guess this would just be a ‘show tank’ and the fish would be kept in another tank when they’re not shooting, at least nowadays. If you think about it, the tank on the set, in nearly every case, won’t be cycled so dumping 10 fish in a brand new tank is a good way to make sure a bunch of them will die off pretty quickly.
My old method during summer months was to freeze a 2/3rds full 2l soda bottle (thoroughly cleaned on the outside) and place it in the tank before going to work, coupled with increased water changes (twice weekly instead of weekly). Cheaper than running the AC just to keep the fish tank cool.
One just feels that the word “wrangler” carries a certain implication of managing creatures of kinds which are at least a bit menacing / fierce / hazardous to deal with. Butterflies are perceived on the whole, as gentle and un-threatening and beautiful and, overall, loved by people (I have no doubt that that’s an over-generalisation, and there are exceptions).
Animal Planet has (had? Coulda been cancelled for all I know…) a show called Tanked, where they follow professional aquarium people. One of the things they needed to do was create a tank for an event, then get rid of it right afterwards (it was for a show premiere). What they ended up doing was creating the tank the same as if it was going to be permanent, and then tore it down afterwards. The fish they used were already claimed by other people so that they could go to safe home afterwards.
Thanks to everyone who replied. I have nothing to add. I just don’t want to be one of those jerks who creates threads and then never goes back to them.
Half of 'em just appear to be CG anyway now. I’ve seen a few with impossible fish combos (salt and fresh mixed etc.) and some with fish that just don’t move or act right.