My ex and I had a catfish that had a different method of attempted suicide. Jaws had a habit of ramming his head into the side of the tank by swimming at it going full speed. He was not a small fish, and it would make quite the thunk when he did it. He’d just sit there, stunned for a while. And after a few minutes, he’d go back to swimming around calmly.
He was…not normal. (I hope.)
No cat, needscoffee. Just a small indifferent dog.
Thank you, Sleeps. We’re still trying to make sense of it. I guess 17 years of swimming around in a circle was enough, …or maybe it was the Tori Amos I played yesterday.
Don’t think of it that way. For all you know Darryl and Larry have been planning this for years. What’s on the other side of the glass? What are those shapes we keep seeing? Those sounds we keep hearing? To steal a line from a favorite book/movie- like the first monkeys shot into space, sacrifices had to be made. Celebrate the bravery of your little explorer.
And buy a lid for your tank.
Well I liked that, FWIW.
Do not look at it as a suicide, but Darryl’s bold and heroic attempt at a better life 
My math tutor was once startled by her entire school of neon tetras leaping from the tank in a mass suicide attempt. She got them a lid.
Why didn’t you say that in the first place?!?!
I had an eel that would get out of the tank every so often. I was able to put him back in a couple of times, but he got out one night and the cats got him. Found him in the bathroom with claw marks in him.
Well, there’s the reason why all these fish seemed to be committing suicide! It suddenly dawns on them one day they are swimming in their own wastes, no matter how efficient the filter, and they want to try and use a proper toilet.
I’d jump, too, if such a realization came to me.
Quite possibly he saw his reflection in the glass and was trying to attack it in a fit of territoriality.
I am sorry for your loss. 
I have had two aquarium pets make a break for it - a small turtle, which I did not find until weeks later, thoroughly dessicated. Why did I not find him? Because he had managed to crawl three rooms away, to the spare room, and hide under a bookshelf. Do you know that he didn’t smell at all? I never smelled him, and I do have a fairly good sense of smell.
The other was an electric blue lobster. He managed to climb up the cord for the heater, overnight. We found him quickly, but he was already dead.
Why do they try to escape? Where are they going to go? Food and a predator-free life is here for the taking, you nitwits!
In other news, I have three arbor vitae in my backyard that we have dubbed Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.
I used to keep aquariums, and this happens occasionally. The first time it happened to one of my fish, I thought the other fish had eaten the missing one. Eventually I found his dessicated little corpse behind the aquarium.
Swordtails are a popular variety that are notorious for jumping out of their tanks.
Any bowl, no matter how free of predators and full of food is still a prison. Oh! To dream of endless depths of the ocean and to swim for an eternity, that is what little goldfish dream of. Well, maybe not the ocean since they’d die in salt water, but probably something similar, you know, without the death part. Well, seeing the result, maybe they do dream of the death part as well, who knows. They are fish after all, maybe it all makes sense to them.
I’ve never heard of someone keeping a lobster as a pet before. How is this done? Is it just in the tank with water? But you said it climbed up the heater cord, so I’m thinking it sounds like the lobster was in a dry tank? I’ve heard that lobsters can breath air, but I thought they still needed to be wet? How does this work? Why does the lobster need a heater anyway? Don’t they live at the bottom of the ocean and it’s cold there? I’d think they were used to the cold.
So many questions! It’s actually a crayfish, and I am trying to find some links on him:
http://ezinearticles.com/?All-About-Freshwater-Blue-Lobster&id=2978346
This page has some pictures:
http://www.petfish.net/articles/Invertebrates/blue_crayfish.php
It needs water, of course, and the water needs to be between 60 and 80 degrees F.
Speaking of escapes - My gecko, on the other hand, shows no interest in trying to escape, except occasionally he will hang off the door and look at us all blase. I keep trying to get a picture but he always falls off before I get the pic. (He’s a desert gecko and severely overconfident in his climbing abilities.)
This sort of thing may be suicide…maybe not. Question Larry more thoroughly, try to get inside his head- but don’t let on as though you are suspicious. You never know what other skeletons will pop up.
Best wishes,
hh
Wait, the fish is dead, but he’s grilling Larry? Dammit, I just can’t keep up with this Nouvelle Cuisine…
If my Red Devil Cichlid (his name is Damien) bites my hand one more time while cleaning the tank I might make his demise look like a suicide. :mad:
Not really but he is a mean bastard.
Even a dead fish can still be a good chum.
I had a suicidal paku (kind of a vegetarian Oscar) once. That damn fish was a foot long and afraid of his own shadow. He was constantly banging around the tank and jumping out. It was all well and good until he jumped out while I was at work.
He had the good grace to land on a stack of newspapers which made for easy wrapping and disposal.
Are you sure it was suicide? Are you sure it wasn’t a hit to silence a witness?