Missing scooter blenny

[huybeme]

Hey y'all,

I'm new to this forum and decided to finally post since I hit a wall. I have a 20 gallon wide tank that's been set up for about 5 months now. After two months I added a couple hermit crabs and snails since I was near the end of my cycle. Two months later I decided to get a cleaner shrimp and a scooter blenny. My tank seems healthy and everything seems to be happy. After a month of having my blenny, I went on a vacation for a week. Since then she has gone missing.

Before, she was very active and very outgoing. She seemed to have been eating well even with little copapods in the tank. She was friendly with the others and seemed happy.

I heard blennies have a peculiar diet but I figured after a month she would have starved and died if she wasn't eating. Since that was not the case, I'm not sure where she is.

After I got home, I figure if she was dead, I would find her body after a water change. I cleaned my tank of algae and even re-arranged my aqua scape. Still no sign of her. While I moved the rocks around, I found a good amount of bristle worms which I am now looking into to control their population. I was wondering if maybe my blenny was eaten by the worms while she was sleeping in the sand. Any advice on if this is possible or whether she is just hiding for a couple of days now. Not sure what's going on but I love my blenny and would like to know what happened. Maybe it starved and the worms got to it?

 

[rssjsb]

Bristle worms won't eat a sleeping fish. My guess is that the scooter died and the hermits and worms disposed of it while you were away.

As I'm sure you know, scooters are dragonets and, while they may take prepared foods, they really do need to have a mature tank to forage in order to maintain their body weight. So I would choose a different fish to replace it. Maybe a goby of some sort.

 

[snorvich]

Bristle worms won't eat a sleeping fish. My guess is that the scooter died and the hermits and worms disposed of it while you were away.

As I'm sure you know, scooters are dragonets and, while they may take prepared foods, they really do need to have a mature tank to forage in order to maintain their body weight. So I would choose a different fish to replace it. Maybe a goby of some sort.

This. Also a 20 gallon tank is unlikely to be able to sustain any dragonet long term without significant effort.

 

[huybeme]

my main goal was to have a pair of clown fishes. I do about 20% water changes every week and have a power filtering system. My ammonia, nitrites are always zero. Nitrates no more than 20 ppm. I don't plan on stocking too much in my tank but would clown fishes be reasonable at my stage right now?

 

[snorvich]

my main goal was to have a pair of clown fishes. I do about 20% water changes every week and have a power filtering system. My ammonia, nitrites are always zero. Nitrates no more than 20 ppm. I don't plan on stocking too much in my tank but would clown fishes be reasonable at my stage right now?

Depends on the species. A. percula or A. ocellaris would be fine.