Blenny Scooter died, help!

Amandacu22

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I have had a Scooter Blenny in my tank for about a year and a half. 30 gallon tank with plenty of live rock and at least 5 to 6 corals. I have never fed him copepods and feed my fish Mysis shrimp. All seemed fine up until about a month ago. He has been living with all of the fish in the tank for 90% of the time he has been in there. 2 Clown Fish (1 male, 1 female), a docile Damsel, and a Bi-colored Angel.

About 5 weeks ago we accidentally "crushed" him with the tool we use to siphon the sand. Nothing physically looked wrong and we realized right away he was under the tube. He seemed to recover okay, but still got a little ansy every time we used it in the tank, erratic swimming etc. but he always calmed down pretty quickly...

About 3 weeks ago my female clown started bullying him, bad. She hosted with our Hammer Spawn and was super territorial. She would push him into a corner of the tank, away from the Spawn, and make him stay there, the Blenny would just go behind the rocks and stay in his corner and I feared the clowns were stressing him out big time...

I noticed he didn't come out as often last week, he used to always be out...and the clowns continued to push him around, this morning I found him dead. (He was alive yesterday, but kind of pale.) Something had already eaten off his dorsal fin and his eyes were white and like gone or receded?? It was disgusting to say the least...

Did something bully him into stress and then he died? Is it because I wasn't feeding him copepods? Is it both?? Did the clowns bully him because they knew he was dying?? I'm a little stumped because he didn't look super sickly before passing....he just hid more often and then I found him dead after seeing him alive the day before...
 
Maybe he had a internal injury that never healed and killed him slowly? But I would assume that the clowns did pick on him because he was the "weakest link" and thats pretty common in nature. Or it could have been something as simple as your pod population dried up. Maybe something else in your tank changed that didn't allow a continuous population of pops to be there for him..
 
Thank you for your response. I think it was a combination of lack of food and the Clowns. You live and learn with living habitats!
 
A 30 gallon tank is pretty small to keep a dragonet without supplemental feeding. I would guess that he wasn't getting enough food especially if the clown was keeping him in a corner. Clowns can get territorial if they're spawning or have eggs.
 
It would be very difficult to maintain a healthy pod population in a 30 gallon to house a scooter long-term. This was at least part of your problem.

Fish you've added in the past few months may have began competing for what pods were present thus starving this fish out further.

Sorry for your loss, :(
 
A 30 gallon tank is pretty small to keep a dragonet without supplemental feeding. I would guess that he wasn't getting enough food especially if the clown was keeping him in a corner. Clowns can get territorial if they're spawning or have eggs.

Just curious, what can you supplement with for a scooter?
 

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