disappearing fish

[cirrus]

Hi everyone,

About four months ago I added a pair of juvenile clowns to our 40g mixed reef tank. At the time they were sharing the space with 3 blue/green chromis, a pair of cleaner shrimp, and a CUC (we have a good skimmer).

Two weeks ago though, I woke up to find one of the clowns missing. It wasn't on the ground outside the tank and hasn't appeared since then, so I can only assume that it died and was eaten overnight. Temp/salinity/chem levels were all stable, and none of the other fish seemed stressed, so I ruled that out as well. It was unusual, but I figured that it might not be anything serious...until I woke up today to find the skeleton of one of the chromis on the bottom of the tank, being chowed on by a bunch of our hermits. I checked all the levels again this morning, and there was nothing clearly wrong...:HELP!:

Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[sen5241b]

You say all chems were stable. Yeah? List them! (This is for your own good).

 

[SarahSmile]

Did you ever notice any bullying with the clowns or chromis? A lot of people say they have 3 chromis, then 1 disappears, then the next, til just 1 is left. Your tank may be a bit small for all of them and it's a territory thing? Just throwing it out there. They pick on each other til 1 is left. Sometimes, it's the same thing with those clowns.
And, yeah, people are going to want to see you list your specific numbers from your testing. What is your ammonia at? What are your nitrates at? Specific numbers help :)

 

[rjordan393]

When I first got into the hobby, I soon noticed that I was losing fish. At the time, I blame water quality and lack of experience. But I did not know when I purchase my live rock that crabs came along with it. It took a while before I noticed one of them crawing under a rock. I set a trap up and caught about 4 of them. I thought that was it until I saw movement under a rock and it was a differant species. It had a hairy claw. When I described it at the fish store, they said it may be a gorrilla crab. That's exactly what it looks like when it is perched on a rock. I think both species are nocturnal as I never saw them feeding. So if its not territorial fighting, you may need to purchase a trap to see if you got them.

 

[Northstar24]

I'm with Sen5241b here, what exactly do you mean by 'fine'? If you really want us to try and speculate on what happened, we need the actual test results. What is 'fine' to one person or LFS may be in actuality totally off. You listed that you have a CUC - whats in it? Snails, hermits, crabs, starfish - what? Please see this thread and answer the questions so that we can try to help determine what may have happened

https://www.livingreefs.com/sticky-oh-noez-mah-fish-sick-threads-t34819.html