I think torch ate my clown

So this seems new to me, and I can't find any prior threads. Dont laugh because i think it seriously happened. I have(had) two tiny occelaris clowns, about the size of your thumb nail. They always stuck together, never fought and always played around the 90 gallons they shared with one other small blue tang (same size) which they never fought with. Had the fish for 3months

Last week I bought the biggest head of torch coral ive seen in a store. The skeletal head of the torch was about the size of the circle you make when touching your pointer and thumb fingers together.

Put the torch in the tank on thursday, it opened beautifully for several days. It was towards the bottom of the tank with medium flow/light. The tank is fairly new, and nothing was around for it to irritate. until monday it was great, very full tentacles reaching 5 inches from base. The dreaded monday i noticed the tentacles did not come out at all. The tentacles were in as much as they could go, barely an 1/4 of an inch. I also noticed that the base looked very bloated compared to the days prior i had been watching it.

Considering the head was so big i figured it was going to split and did not get concerned. Tuesday I woke up and looked at the tank to find half the torches tentacles had melted away. Throughout the day I watched each piece wither away until there was none left. It went from beautiful to stressed to gone in two days.

Over the past few days I realized i havent seen both clowns, only one. Theres a tight seal on the tank, leaving no way for fish to jump out. I fed some rods food which makes the fish go crazy, during which my second clown did not show himself. Ive been staring at the tank for hours while looking in the rocks, and he is gone.

Is it possible the torch ate the clown considering their sizes and unexplainable death of the torch.

Water tests today as follows
nitrate 0
nitrite 0
ammonia has a small trace probly from the death of the coral
ph 8.3
calc 450
mag 1350
alk 10.5
phosphate 0
temp is steady at 79
Skim is thicker than usual

 

Im not going to lie ive never heard of that before but would not suprise me,....new thinks happen every day in this hobby lol

 

given their sizes, its the only thing that i can think of that would explain the disappearance of the fish and rapid death of the coral, especially since everything else is fine

 

Do you have a clean up crew in your tank? Hermits can completely decimate a dead fish overnight.

I wouldn't say it's impossible for a torch to kill a clown but I've never heard of it happening. The thinking I'm going with is that clowns lay eggs in anemones so their young are not in danger from a nem, and a nem could kill a torch, right?

Could it be possible the clown died and drifted into the torch somehow?

 

How much live rock do you have? If you have a significant amount, the corpse could be hidden amongst it. Also, as was already suggested, if you have a clean up crew, they would make short work of a small fish corpse.

Also, depending on the amount of LR you have, there might be a crab hitchhiker that snared the clown.

As for the torch.... so many factors there too. Does your LFS properly acclimatize new livestock? Did you properly acclimatize the torch to your tank?

Livestock vanishing without a trace is just part of the hobby, unfortunately. My tank was like the bermuda triangle for clowns until my most recent pair.

 

there is CUC blue legs and turbo snails mostly. As far as the torch, i had my eye on it at the lfs for a while, it was there for at least a month, and they are a very knowledgable/trusted lfs. (Fish and Icthy stuff in tampa). I kind of rushed acclimating it to my tank but would not think it was affected because it was so perfect for 3-4 days

 

I could see a touch eating a clown that size but I couldn't imagine it dying from eating them.

 

If you hear the sound of hoofs think horses not zebras.

Small clownfish have a high mortality rate. Probably died somewhere in the tank and was quickly taken care of. On the small chance the coral did eat it, I doubt it would adversely affect the coral.

JM2C

 

I would guess it's just coincidence your clown went missing and your torch died. Your torch was fairly new to the tank, so it probably took a week or so for it to die for whatever reason.

But who knows! Maybe it did eat the clown. But I would guess the clown died and the hermits cleaned up most of the body and the torch happened to die at the same time.

 

Sweedish, sorry for you loss

as its a relatively new tank
Its possibly that the death of the clown caused the ammonia spike
and that the torch died as a result of elevated ammonia levels

you may have missed a much higher Ammonia level, which occured prior to your testing

Steve