Clownfish and some questions.

Yes, I learned this the hard way....or I should say my fish learned the hard way due to my ignorance. i started the tank with both a diamond goby and a sand sifting star (what brilliant choices for a new tank). They did okay for two years and then both started wasting away at the same time. my guess is that the two of them finally finished off the fauna in the sand. Initially, the goby was willing to enter the water column for food but as my other fish became larger and more agressive (aggressively going after food not other fish), the goby stopped competing and relied soley on what it could find in the sand.

 

it's just a mutation, a phenotype mutation