Fish Keep Vanishing

[1entra]

Hi there,

Since setting up my tank a few months ago I have lost 8 fish... the last of them being today. Every single one of the just disapeared and was never seen again. Water params are fine.

All the corals in my tank are open and healthy on a daily basis so I'm assuming it is not the water quality killing off my fish?!

I used to hear a lot of irregular loud clicking coming from my tank and initially suspected a mantis to be behind all the disapearances. I end up taking all my LR out of the tank and giving it both a FW and a carbonated water dips to no avail as nothing was found.

Anyways I keot the tank fish free for several weeks before adding a YT damsel. Seeing as the damsel survived a couple of weeks, I went onto add a nother fish over time. But then the fish started to disapear again!

About 1 month ago I lost a clownfish, then 2 weeks ago my yellow clown goby vanished. Then sunday my other clownfish disapeared, and just now I have come home to find my firefish is nowhere to be seen even at feeding time!

I have 2 fireshrimp in the tank and both are fine! My red sea star however seems to have had one of it's legs partially torn off (could have got stuck in a pump?!) and my YT damsel's tails and anal fin are quite badly torn (possible from my royal gramma?!)

I really am desperate and need all advice as so far I have lost over a 100quids worth of fish and really do not wish to lose anymore!!!!

All advice and comments are welcome alond with possible causes and resolutions...

 

[craigybaby37]

Well when i have my mantis in my tank i knew the rock it would stay in so i removed it and gave it a dip in freezing cold RO water and it refused to budge......left it in there for about half hour and still nothing.

So took to rock outside and cracked it in half with a flat screwdriver and to my supprise the mantis was in there but had very little life left in it and didnt recover so i sadly had to dispose of it.

Anyways the point ime making is that though uve dipped your live rock it may of been stubborn like mine an refused to come out and its back in the tank??


Have you tried setting up any sort of trap???

 

[RadaR]

My red sea star however seems to have had one of it's legs partially torn off

Leads me to believe the predator is still in there. Like craigybaby37 said, the mantis could have been very stubborn to come out. You could use a red light at night and try spot something.

 

[1entra]

I have tried using a red bulb in my bedside lamp and sat beside the tank for hours before but didnt even get a glimpe of anything!

I have tried using a bottle trap for a week or so before I got fed up and carried out all the dips and again I got no result although I did manage to trap my shrimp, snails and a hermit or 2 in there!

Ive not been hearing no clicking for a while, just an occassional click which could be anything! Things have been going so well as well and then again the nightmare begins!!!!

I do not really want to be cracking all my pieces of LR as I like them the way they are.

The funniest thing however is both my fireshrimp have never been touched and surely they would be easy targets for a mantis? Iv lost several snails in the past but that could be due to anything... including my hermits!

Other than a potential fish eating mantis, does anybody else have any suggestions to what might be killing my fish?

Surely its not the water as this would affect my corals well being as well yea? theres not been a single day when any one of my corals has not opened which leads me to believe all the water is ok. I currently have a torch, frogspawn, a hammer, a trumpet, a sun coral, a bubble coral and several zoo'z and polys!

 

[n3ont3tra]

The fish all went to different spots, right? They didn't sleep in one place?

 

[1entra]

Nope all disapeared from different spots as far as I'm aware so got no way of locating any potential predator from that...

 

[dilbert]

I only want to add that Astrea/Turbo snails can make a loud clicking. They often do sudden movements with their shells and this sounds like a loud click when their shells strike the glass. It sounds like you would knock with a pebble on the glass.

 

[Lynden]

I still think it would be a good (or at least super cool) idea to get a predator. An adult Coris, Thalassoma or Novaculichthys wrasse would take a mantis down, and so would a large Arothron puffer or pebble toothed moray. I'm still not quite convinced it is a mantis, but there isn't very many more possibilities than a piscivore to be honest, especially as you are still losing fish and everything else is fine. If it is a mantis it is probably a spearer.

 

[1entra]

Yea but wouldnt a predator have to be big to take down any potential mantis? Also wouldnt it eat my corals and inverts?

I dont really want to be losing everything I have in the tank...

 

[SkiFletch]

The ones lynden mentioned only eat inverts, shrimp, crabs, not corals. Your fireshrimp will have to be QT'ed, but they're not too demanding and easy to QT.

Edit: Just to doule check, you have looked extensively for carpet surfing?

 

[1entra]

Yes Iv double and triple checked for carpet surfing ski. I'd much rather they had met this fate than know I have something in my tank that is picking off my fish!

What I dont understand is why wouldn't a mantis or other predator take down my CUC first which include snails, hermits and my 2 fireshrimps? surely they would be much easier petential prey than the fish?

So how big would one of the above fish have to be to take down a mantis? I really dont want one too big as my tank is 32" x 18" x 18". Also the fish needs to be one that is quite agile and be able to get into all the caves and gaps in the rockwork in my tank...

 

[SkiFletch]

Spearer-type mantids prefer fish over snails/hermits/shrimps. Their raptorial appendages are not like the sturdy smasher's. Better off slicing a fish in two and gobbling it up that way, cause they can't break hard shells.

A young adult ~3" would prolly be able to take down the mantis. Those wrasses are quite agile, you'll understand when you see them going to work . Coris and blueheaded (thalassoma) wrasses are prolly the easiest to find here in the states. Dunno about over there in the UK though. The idea here is to "rent" the wrasse. Buy him, give him a couple months, and then test out with another damsel or clown. If they do OK, return/sell the wrasse

 

[tiger_82_]

Hi 1entra,

I actually joined fishforums just to reply to you! I had the SAME damn problem with my tank over here in los angeles. My fish first had ragged tails. Then my firefish died - found him floating with half his body gnawed off! I was looking at my two clowns thinking, gosh, they look so cute and cuddly but they're really killers!

But no luck, the clowns are of course harmless.

One more dead firefish and I decided to take the problem seriously. I watched my tank for three hours, with a flashlight I looked in all the holes in the LR and watched as my fish (now down to 2 clowns and a bicolor psuedochromis) swam around. Suddenly I noticed that the pseudo-chromis who loves caves simply would NOT enter one particulary wonderful looking cavern in the LR.

I immediately went Sherlock Holmes and put a piece of shrimp (the pre-cooked kind from the store, not the $30 per shrimp kind from the LFS... just so you know I'm not crazy!) on a line with a tiny hook - a #10 I only use for bait-fishing (tiny hook + tiny line). I couldn't see the whole way down in this cavern and didn't want to move all the rocks, but no need! No sooner had I dropped down the bait the line tugged! I was quite honestly shocked that something was in MY tank that I made from the ground up and I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL IT WAS (and it kept eating/attacking MY damn expensive FISH! I couldn't pull it out, it just let go of the bait. But now it was WAR!!!! I dissasembled the live rock structure and pulled the offending 10 lb peice out. With a coat-hanger and a vengeance I shined my flashlight into the cave and saw two red eyes staring back at me! Pure evil, Satan had incarnated himself as a red-eyed crab from hell that was eating my fish!

It took about five minutes to pry that bastard out of the cave with a coat-hanger and then with a satisfying crunch squish him on the garage floor!

After looking online he very closely matched an $4.25 Emerald Crab - http/www.etropicals.com/product/prod_Dis...amp;pCatId=1260

I looked around and most of them are "reef safe" but other people mention them as opportunistic feeders aka eat ANYTHING! My firefish had been trying to bed down for the night in the wrong damn cave and he was gnawing on them!!! I even found small fin parts still left in the bottom of the cave, ugh.

So now, while I still love my hermits... I have joined the "crabs are tasty and have no place in my reef tank" club.

-Try the line with the shrimp, go STRAIGHT to the cave your fish decided NOT to ENTER. Look for the red eyes and the dark green shell. They're hard as heck to spot in dark light and even harder to pry out!

Good luck to you sir!

-Will