Missing fish

[Hunna]

Well, this is a first. I’ve lost fish before, at the beginning of my reef keeping journey, but there was always a body. I’m currently missing a little blue chromis in my daughter’s Eshopps Deskmate that was added Thursday afternoon. The fish seemed healthy, and was eating since adding it. I saw it as recently as last night. I got home this evening from work, and now it’s missing.

The tank itself is is super healthy, and running great. There’s a lid, with almost no way for the fish to fit through, other than into the back AOI chamber. There’s a YWG+pistol shrimp and a tailspot blenny, along with various small CuC. I know fish can go from appearing healthy to dead quickly, but there’s no way its body could have been completely consumed in such a short amount of time. Could the pistol shrimp have dragged its body into the cave it has dug out?

Here’s the tank. The rock is to keep my void kitten from ripping the filter floss out.



This screenshot is from video I took Thursday

 

[jd22]

I do think a clean up crew could have taken care of a chromis pretty quickly. I had a medium size powder blue disappear that I never saw again

 

[Hunna]

I do think a clean up crew could have taken care of a chromis pretty quickly. I had a medium size powder blue disappear that I never saw again

There are 2 small blue leg hermits, mini nassarius, dwarf ceriths, and 2 trochus snails. There’s no way they could disappear a body in ~9 hours by themselves.

 

[Jikkermanccini]

A pistol shrimp would be more than capable of stowing away a body in the tunnels, I'd wager that's where it is. The shrimp may have found it dead already, chromis like to randomly die since they hide infections for so long.

 

[Hunna]

A pistol shrimp would be more than capable of stowing away a body in the tunnels, I'd wager that's where it is. The shrimp may have found it dead already, chromis like to randomly die since they hide infections for so long.

That was my best guess. A mushroom got knocked loose and before I got around to doing something about it, it also went missing. Read somewhere they’ve been known to steal coral randomly. Now to figure out how to break it to my 4 year old when I get her Monday evening, and how to talk her out of wanting another one lol.

 

[msporleder]

Don't go digging and make things worse.

 

[Jikkermanccini]

That was my best guess. A mushroom got knocked loose and before I got around to doing something about it, it also went missing. Read somewhere they’ve been known to steal coral randomly. Now to figure out how to break it to my 4 year old when I get her Monday evening, and how to talk her out of wanting another one lol.

Maybe you could get a sapphire damsel over the weekend and tell her that the chromis "grew up"? avoid a sad moment, get an invincible fish, etc.

 

[Hunna]

Maybe you could get a sapphire damsel over the weekend and tell her that the chromis "grew up"? avoid a sad moment, get an invincible fish, etc.

I’m hoping with all the hustle and bustle from the holidays, it won’t be that big of a deal. I tried to talk her out of it to begin with, since her tank already had 2 fish, but she was ok with it moving to my 40b once it got too big for her tank. We picked out one of the smallest ones Premier had, to give it the most time in her tank as possible, but maybe we should have gone a bit bigger.