dead fish... your comments?

[abezr]

i have a 190 gal setup with a powder b tang and a yellow tang, yellow watchman goby, a school of 6 scissortail dartfish, 2 clowns and a cleanup crew consisting of porcelain crabs, snails, crabs etc.

So i bought a cleaner wrasse 2 months ago, i got lucky because it ate off the veggie clip, ate cyclopeeze and flake. it's tummy was nice and plump and healthy looking.

One morning it was gone... and showed up like 3 days later.. but then disapeared for 2 and a half weeks now?

How do i know if it died or it's just hiding.. i dont get it..
i lost a clown goby(it was sick when i brought it home from local pet store)
and found it on my powerheads so i find it unlikely that my cleaner wrasse would go missing without a trace.. I have a small cleanup crew so..

ANY ideas?

 

[shifty51008]

what are your water parameters? (numbers please)

the main thing I can think of without knowing the water parameters is that they are not a good fish to keep. they don't survive long in aquariums and IMO best left in the ocean. not sure if it is the way they are cought, diet, or parisite.

 

[ezerasurfr]

I know you have a "small" cleanup crew, but just a few crabs can take care of a wrasse in just a few hours (if it died).

Is the wrasse juvenile or adult? Juvenile may hide in your rocks in a large tank, but if you havent seen for 2 weeks its probably not looking good. Did you check your overflow and sump?

 

[400M1963]

Did you Formalin Dip and incubate in hosptal tank a week to observe first?

 

[abezr]

ph 8.4
nitrate 0
nitrite 0
ammonia 0
calcium 450
1.024

it cant get into my overflow because ive got glass covers and the overflow reaches and blocks any entry to the overflow...

I have too much flow for there not to be any remains thats the part that confuses me..

 

[sanchoy]

cleaner wrasse:

check behind tank and around carpet area. most of the time they are found shriveled up like a piece of dried bacon behind the stand.

 

[tlo25]

That sucks, I have seen just bristleworms do a good job on eating a dead fish.

 

[abezr]

it cant escape the aquarium, ive got a glass top cover... and the overflows reach up til the glass so it can't leave the actual aquarium... still a big mystery because these fish are known to go into hiding for a long time... Someone told me that their cleaner wrasse when it vanished was seen sometimes swimming around at night... we will see.

 

[lordofthereef]

That wrasse isn't any more prone to having issues from "dirty" water than another other fish. For this reason I wouldn't worry about your parameters too bad.

They can jump though... do you run an open top (or have any openings)? if so, you might have what we call reef jerky in your fish room someplace. Or... things do die sometimes unexplained. You don't know how old the fish was when collected, nor do you really know a whole lot about it. I think sometimes we look too far into these things, especially if the fish doesn't require special care (read average aquarists have success keeping the specimen long term).

 

[abezr]

lol reef jerky haha - my set-up is impossible to escape (muahaha sounds evil)
So the fish is in there.. only thing i can think of is it died in a hole and body is rotting in it. I got a tiny ammonia spike while it was missing so I think it was the wrasse.