Treefer32
Valuable Member
Out of 26 fish I've had 2 corpses surface in the last 2 weeks. My Goby was paired with two pistol shrimp and I'd had him for over 2 years. I saw him once every 3-4 months. Fish had dug a hole in between rocks where the goby hung out and my larger tangs were able to fit through and get to him. They didn't like him coming out and hiding in the rocks. Drove my Caribbean blue tang nuts. He would lay on his side flat against the sand trying to watch the goby sifting sand. (took me a while to figure out what the tang was doing laying on his side, he only did it when the goby was out sifting sand.)
My suspicion is as the sand channels changed by the pistol shrimp and the rock structures shifted slightly underneith, either the goby was crushed or deprived of food. I over fed routinely so the shrimp and goby could scrounge up stuff. What's weird is all that surfaced of the goby was his head.... It was missing it's skin, it was just the jaw outline of the goby and nothing else sticking up out of the rocks near the sand bed. And even that part is gone now. My assumption is the goby died in the sand bed and the cleanup crew ate his insides (nessarious snails and Bristle worms) and left its head behind and the flow in the tank somehow pulled the head out just enough to be visible?
Next, I guess not surprising is a dead anthia just surfaced. I had 5 and one of the 4 females is dead. The male is doing fine along with the other 3 females. I've heard they need to be in odd numbers of 3, 5, or 7 females to 1 male. Would the male have killed the 4th one? It's fins are pretty damaged and frayed and it's corpse is nearly gone, so it had to have died in a rock somewhere, with the flow again pulling it out after much of it had been eaten from the inside out... I hope that's what it was...
The rest of my fish are showing no sign of stress or disease. I haven't changed anything in probably 6 months. My guess is the anthias fought and one had to go. But, not sure, may just not been feeding enough? Hard to say?
My suspicion is as the sand channels changed by the pistol shrimp and the rock structures shifted slightly underneith, either the goby was crushed or deprived of food. I over fed routinely so the shrimp and goby could scrounge up stuff. What's weird is all that surfaced of the goby was his head.... It was missing it's skin, it was just the jaw outline of the goby and nothing else sticking up out of the rocks near the sand bed. And even that part is gone now. My assumption is the goby died in the sand bed and the cleanup crew ate his insides (nessarious snails and Bristle worms) and left its head behind and the flow in the tank somehow pulled the head out just enough to be visible?
Next, I guess not surprising is a dead anthia just surfaced. I had 5 and one of the 4 females is dead. The male is doing fine along with the other 3 females. I've heard they need to be in odd numbers of 3, 5, or 7 females to 1 male. Would the male have killed the 4th one? It's fins are pretty damaged and frayed and it's corpse is nearly gone, so it had to have died in a rock somewhere, with the flow again pulling it out after much of it had been eaten from the inside out... I hope that's what it was...
The rest of my fish are showing no sign of stress or disease. I haven't changed anything in probably 6 months. My guess is the anthias fought and one had to go. But, not sure, may just not been feeding enough? Hard to say?
