Deceased Chromis

[El Langostino]

I posted the other day about my already injured when purcahsed chromis. My LFS was nice enough to replace him without me even presenting the corpse to them. so I have my 3 chromis schooling now...however, I do think that the ailing fish died last night and I've been unable to locate him all day. Is this going to be a problem for my nitrates ammonia? He wasn't very large. 2 inches max. I hope my tank will be fine because I really don't think I'm going to find him in 90 lbs of LR.

 

[quiksilver]

How old is the tank and what size? Do you have a cleanup crew? Do you have a sump/refuge? Protein skimmer?

With 90 lbs of LR i seriously doubt you are going to have a problem at all with any decent cleanup crew.

 

[El Langostino]

It's a 90 gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump or so, the tank just finished its cycle last week, it's about 6 weeks old. I have 4 blue leg hermits, and emerald crab, and 5 turbo snails.

 

[Holmie_D_Klown]

make sure to check behind the tank, in the overflow, sump, etc.

 

[El Langostino]

It'd be a terrible fate to suffer getting tossed into a filter full of bio-balls in a sump that needs to be topped off tonight, lol.

I've checked everywhere that's visible and see nothing. I have a few cavernous areas that would make locating a dead fish impossible if they were in there.

 

[NCreefwannabe]

Use a powerhead to flush water around in there then, you may be able to flush him out with the water movement.

Since the tank is still new, I would try to find him anyways...

Is your tank open top? He coulda jumped to his death lol. Ive lost 2 FW fish to the daredevil jump of death..

 

[dchao]

Yep, one of my chomis jumped into the overflow and I rescued him from there once. But that chromis finally met his fate, and is dead now. IMO, a healthy chromis should not jump out of the tank. He must have been chased by some other fish.

 

[El Langostino]

Yeah, I've looked in the overflow, the sump, every conceivable cave and hard to view spot, rearranged some LR on my left island to search for the corpse but no such luck in finding it. I hope the clean up crew got to him and made a meal of him last night or earlier today. Tthey had 15 hours or so in which to do it so I'm sure it's very possible even for just 4 hermits and and an emerald.

 

[J Castellano]

Disappearing chromis seems to be a common problem in this hobby. I am currently trying to locate one of my four blue - green chromis right now. He has been gone for three days so I am pretty sure that the other chromis chased him away. Either out of the tank or into a hole in my live rock where he is no longer amongst the living..

 

[boxfishpooalot]

Imo chromis deaths are related to starvation. Theese fish are planktovores. All they eat in the wild is zooplankton. Tiny little crustations.

I have 10 chromis in my tank, I feed them 5 times a day with mysid shrimp. Its one thing that they love. Go figure its a crustation.

Somtimes chromis will bully each other. This also causes their spiral down towards death. If they dont get enough food, and you couple that with getting bullied on they will have less courage to eat. Also bullying can cause a chromis to feel bad and not eat as normal as often.

In nature they form large schools of 20-1000. They sleep in the hard stony coral branchs. Also to get away from predators in moments of danger. So hard corals are also a nice safe haven from predation and bullying. Helps to make the fish feel at home. Wich will also help them eat more food.

Chromis are found in lagoon areas. The water in the lagoon is calm but also fast moving at times. This area of the reef is loaded with zooplankton. Thats because all the ditritus gets wahsed up to this area, wich the zooplankton eat. Zooplankton also eat hair algae, wich is common in the lagoon area because of the shallower depths. The light is in favor for this type of algae.

Good luck

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