Fish disappearing

[StephNewman]

I have had three of my fish disappear in the last two to three months. 2 chromis and now my target dragonet, all three were on the small side, I am wondering if I have a killer in my tank. All of them looked healthy and no bodies have ever been seen. I am wondering if someone can maybe pick out the culprete. I am thinking it might be one of these. Can anyone tell me if any or all of these have a tendency on killing and devouring fish.
long tenacle anemone (large probably about 8 inches round)
tube anemone
sand sifting star fish (large)
serpent starfish
brittle starfish
I think these are the only things that could be killing them but who knows maybe it is somehting else all together.

 

[Reefer Wannabe]

Do you have other chromis? If so, I would bet they killed the other chromis, and your starfish then ate the remains.

It's also possible your dragonet died (do you have lots of pods?) and the starfish ate them.

I doubt if any of those guys are murderers, but if so, I would guess maybe the brittle star. (is it green?)

HTH

 

[StephNewman]

I have had the brittle stars for a long time without fish disappearing. I started with four chromis and are now down to two. they are school fish and doubt they killed each other. I have a lot of pods in my tank. The dragonet was healthy looking, I actually have two dragonets, one is still alive, I don't think it was a starvation problem. I have been reading up on tube anemones and they say that slow moving fish such as dragonets often turn into food for it, so I am leaning towards that being the culprit. Infact the tube anemone is one of the last things I introduced to the tank and subsequently things started disappearing afterwards, so I think that the tube anemone might be my best bet. Anyone that have a nice big refugium or only large fish interested in buying it for $30. I paid $45 for it.

 

[frenchie]

chromis aren't real hardy but serpent starfish are known to hunt fish if not fed well, tube anenome are bad at night there tentacles extend even longer and hurt corals and are know to eat fish i knew someone who bought two and tried to give em to me for free cause they lost many coral and fish.

 

[stlouisguy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9974671#post9974671 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by StephNewman
I have had the brittle stars for a long time without fish disappearing. I started with four chromis and are now down to two. they are school fish and doubt they killed each other.

Sorry, but chromis are very well known for killing off their own kind in our systems. I have tried many times, sometimes getting 10-12 and ending up with 1 or 2. They go about one every other day or so. Run a search and you will see that they do kill each other.

 

[StephNewman]

okay, they weren't showing signs of aggression towards each other but maybe they did kill each other, not sure of the reason for the target mandarin however, noone was picking on it and it looked healthy to me

 

[SlickSRT4]

I had several chromis, one morning I was missing one and the next day I was missing another one. I looked around the tank as best I could but thought my anemone got to it. Well a few days later one of them reappeared, strange. I still don't know what happened. Maybe it was in the overflow but I didn't see it.