Goby looks beaten up without reason

[t.karkoulis]

Hello all,

I took delivery of a white goby (pics below) last Saturday, and he was doing ok, but last night I saw him outside his rock, thought he was scavenging, but when i had a closer look i saw his tail was a bit "nipped" and it was like going towards red, not white anymore. Injured in general.

That said, he is in a 55g tank with 3 small clowns and a small blue hippo tang, one cleaner shrimp, and some trochus snails.

I have about 20kg of live rock, no corals, and a normal sandbed. Parameters (the ones i can measure with my current setup) are:

pH: ~8.5
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: less than 5ppm
Phosphates: 0
Magnesium: Cant remember, but in the safe zone (where the test kit sais "ok")
Salinity: 1.025

Before you shout "MANTIS", yes, i did have a small mantis at some point, 2 years ago. It ate my shrimps as soon as i put them in. The tank went through a bad cycle (both in terms of parameters/algae) and in terms of not feeding, having no fish or other inverts etc. then 6 months ago i took it apart, kept the water and its bacteria and the rock (which i scrubed with a brush, thoroughly) changed the sandbed, cleaned everything up etc. No sign of the mantis. everything else was pretty much dead (fish were in another tank by then, for quarantine) there was no more food for it, so i thought it was gone.

By the time i took the tank apart, I hadnt seen him for like 3-4 months, so that takes us to about 10 months without seeing him.

Another thing is, the cleaner shrimp i have now is small, if he were alive, wouldnt he just massacre it first?

Right. Time for Pics.

Thx guys

 

[Kidd Reef]

Looks ok in the picture i see what your talking about with the tail but it just looks kinda folded to me. Either way it way likely just a result of him taking a bit of aggression as the new fish on the block. I know my took a few nips of black misbar clowns fins the first 2 weeks.

speaking of clowns,3 clowns is an odd number, i was always under the impression 2 would pair up and start acting aggressive towards the odd man out. and though you mention he's small a 55G isnt going to hold a blue hippo long term, your looking at more around 125G for that.

Im going to put my money on Tankmate aggression.(if anything.)

 

[t.karkoulis]

No no it was definitely nipped and red as if there was blood or something. His tail was white when I first got him.

And i say "was" because :-( i found him like an hour ago.

The hippo is going to a bigger tank indeed, im putting a new setup together (in paper at least) or hes going back to the LFS.

3 clowns is weird indeed and the little guy is not too happy about being without a mate, so that needs to be taken care asap, but after this, I need to know what did this so I can decide if its safe to put another fish in there.

Thanks for your response!

 

[BuzzPion]

Safe to put another fish in there? Tank isn't safe now. One of the three of your clowns will soon be dead. Hippo tang? Gonna get bigger and kill the other two clowns.

Yeah, yeah..the clowns are small and the tang is moving to some imaginary tank you are going to build out of thin air someday...

 

[t.karkoulis]

Safe to put another fish in there? Tank isn't safe now. One of the three of your clowns will soon be dead. Hippo tang? Gonna get bigger and kill the other two clowns.

Yeah, yeah..the clowns are small and the tang is moving to some imaginary tank you are going to build out of thin air someday...

Your good and helpful answer to my question being...?

 

[BuzzPion]

Your good and helpful answer to my question being...?

I think your question is wanting to know how the fish got damaged. No, it wasn't an imaginary manits, it was one of the other stressed fish in your tank. Probably one of the clowns.

Remove the non-paired clown and rehome the tang.

 

[ThRoewer]

This doesn't look like nipped on but rather like necrosis - that goby is severely sick. It looks like it's tail got infected and as if it is already partly necrotic and in the process of completely dying off. I have seen this before on gobies and jawfish and it usually didn't end well. He may loose his tail, but the most likely outcome is that he will die from blood poisoning.

The cause may be that his tail was squeezed by something falling on it or while being caught with a net or due to some other form of injury.

You may try to treat him with broadband antibiotics (do that only in a hospital tank of course).

I would also strongly suggest that you start quarantining new fish for at least 6 weeks (better 2 full months) before putting them into your main tank.

 

[t.karkoulis]

This doesn't look like nipped on but rather like necrosis - that goby is severely sick. It looks like it's tail got infected and as if it is already partly necrotic and in the process of completely dying off. I have seen this before on gobies and jawfish and it usually didn't end well. He may loose his tail, but the most likely outcome is that he will die from blood poisoning.

The cause may be that his tail was squeezed by something falling on it or while being caught with a net or due to some other form of injury.

You may try to treat him with broadband antibiotics (do that only in a hospital tank of course).

I would also strongly suggest that you start quarantining new fish for at least 6 weeks (better 2 full months) before putting them into your main tank.

Hmm, now that you mention that, I did wake up to a rock that fell, although it was far away from its hiding place, that might have been the reason.

Thank you sir. Poor goby. I do have a quarantine tank but i got lazy this time around.