fish vanished!

[salefen]

I put a yellow tailed damsel in my 135 about a week ago. It was doing fine eating and looked healthy no problems at all. I wake up this morning and it is gone I wonder what happened to it. any ideas has this happened to any of you where a fish just vanished over night?

 

[Anonymous]

One damsel in a 135 might be tough to see at times. However if this is a reef with a full complement of cleanup crew it is rare to find any dead fish. Basically in a healthy reef aquarium anyone who looks drowsey is likely to get eaten.

While likely that he has met his demise I've had Royal gramma's disappear in a 72 gallon reef, only to be seen 6 weeks later when a new gramma is introduced to the environment.

 

[Eboman]

I've had a few fish "disappear" to never be seen again. Most recently, it was a cleaner wrasse that I had for about 6 months. I thought he may have been hiding, but after a month and no fishy..I can only assume the worst. I got into my tank and started changing around some liverock (I'm afraid he may have gotten buried under some rock).

If your fish did "pass away", any hermits/snails/worms/fish should clean the remains out pretty fast. Just keep a good eye on your skimmer for the next few weeks and make sure it's getting most of the organics out. You also may want to test for ammonia, just to be safe.

In my opinion, tearing down the entire system just to find out whether the fish is dead may do more harm than good. Even if you were to find a "body" (or what's left of it), you may stress everthing out more by disrupting everything. Keep an eye on your parameters. If they get out of line, then I would think about searching around. More than likely, you should have no problems. I've lost a chromis once that never re-appeared and everything came in at a normal range (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, etc.). A damsel isn't much bigger than a chromis, so I wouldn't be too worried.

I agree with MickAv8r....most likely, any remains is already taken care of (eaten by cleanup crew/detrivore kits).

I'm sorry to hear about your fish.

However, he may still show up. Although, I've never seen any "shy" damsels, he may pop out in a day or two.

Hope that helps,
Eboman

 

[gazpep]

I had the same thing happen recently. I bought a signal goby, saw him the first 2 days in my 120 and haven't sighted him since despite looking in and around the tank (thinking he may have jumped out)there has been no trace of him...that was 2 months or more back.

I wasn't overly worried about his remains ( assuming he'd perished in there) polluting the tank as a fish of that size would be consumed by the critters in there....nature takes care of these things within reason. If it was a large fish I would have moved the LR to find the remains but not something small like a damsel or goby.