Missing Fish

I used RO water to start my tank but sometimes use non-RO to prevent it from evaporating. I feel that if it were phosphates i'd see the dead ones. My biggest concern is the fish's disappearance. :-/

 

I moved to -------General Reef topics.

No immediate intervention can be provided other than assisting with possible disease issue or other husbandry issue.

How long did you have the Mandarin, what were you feeding?

How long did you have the chromis or the fire fish?

Were the fish eating, any physical signs of a decline in health?

 

Yeah...me too.

My tank has two areas that items collect in. One was under some rocks. Another was the other side of the tank between some rocks and the overflow. Maybe yours is a hidden area.

 

My Mandarin was living happily off the copepods, have had him for 2 months before his disappearance.
The firefish i had from the start and went MIA about 3 months ago
My Chromi has been along from the start as well and went missing 2 days ago.
As far as i can tell there were no signs of change. My firefish and Chromi always used to hide in the rocks but came out regularly for food.

 

Yeah, I think I'll move some rocks around. Do some serious searching :-[

 

I am going to be blunt here.

Unless you were supplementing the diet of the Mandarin significantly it probably starved. Please disregard if you were buying pods and adding them to the system, routinely.

If you have hermits or other crabs or certain types of snail the body of the fish is quickly consumed, even by bristle worms sometimes in hours.

Moving rocks around for a missing fish might bring you some pieces of mind but I would not suggest it. If the fish is hiding it will show up, if dead there is not much you can do if you do find any remains.

A 29 gallon tank with rocks is not a lot of space so a hiding fish should show up soon.

What are you feeding?
Do you have a serpent star?

Do you use dechlorinator when you top off?

 

Thanks for the honesty, it is much appreciated. I'm just very curious to where these fish have ended up. I'll give it a couple of days, see if the Chromi shows up

 

I added to my previous post.

Just trying to get to the root cause so you do not run into the same problem in the future.

Do you have any bullies in the tank such a 6 line wrasse, dotty back, clown...?

 

I have a two clowns but they seem pretty docile. I just recently(same time i got my clowns) picked up 2 more Chromis. One is bigger and does pick on the smaller of the pair. He did not bother my older Chromi. As far as serpent stars, I have seen a very small one(no bigger than my thumb nail) a couple of months prior. ATM i'm feeding them Hikari Marine pellets. The small size. All the fish seemed to enjoy them. No dechlorinator :/

 

Chromis do kill off other chromis in smaller tanks, you almost always end up with one.
Fire fish are sometimes a tricky fish and do not do well in smaller tanks with more aggressive fish such as clowns and chromis.
Mandarins really need to be trained on prepared foods, have pods added routinely or have an over abundance of pods available via sump or fuge and use of macro algae.

I have kept nanos for many years, they have what I call a fish threshold. For some reason you try to add that last fish and it either dies or another does, the system can only handle a certain number of fish. Typically 3-4 small fish is really all the system can handle unless the nano is tied into a larger sump/fuge.

Just my 2 cents and not meant to cover each individual nano, generalizations that I have noticed while keeping smaller tanks.