My Healthy Mandarin Dragonet Died

[aleok]

Woke up this morning and noticed a 16-18" strain of mucus/slim in the middle of my tank. It appeared to be coming off my SMALL Zoas colony, so i didn't think much of it, until I noticed my mandarin dragonet about 6" below, dead on the sand bed with the slim trail coming off him too.

Had him for over a year, trained to eat frozens, he was eating last night, always been fat and lively. My favorite fish.

I test my water frequently and everything is normal. All other fish and coral seem fine.

The only thing I can think of this something to do with the palytoxin from the Zoas, but that seems far-fetched. Or my giant emerald crab attacked him, but there are no signs of trama..

Any insight will be greatly appreciated, I want to get another one asap, but don't want this to happen again.

 

[Whiterabbitrage]

Sorry for your loss. Our fish our more like friends than pets, but when one dies, I always do an autopsy. You can get a dissecting microscope cheap off of eBay but even just using a magnifying glass it's better than nothing. There are instructions on how to perform investigative fish autopsies in older fish manuals and probably online too. That way at least you'll know what happened.

 

[aleok]

Shucks the corpse has been on a pile of rocks in the yard all day. Probably eaten by bugs already. Don't think I'd get far with an autopsy.

Any other ideas?

 

[snorvich]

In a 45 gallon tank, despite eating frozen, most likely it starved to death. One year is sort of the boundary condition.

 

[snorvich]

Another possibility is nutritional deficiency. Google fatty liver disease in marine fish.

 

[aleok]

In a 45 gallon tank, despite eating frozen, most likely it starved to death. One year is sort of the boundary condition.

wasn't only a 45 gallon tank. 90 gallon display with 20g sump and 40g refugium.

I've actually never seen him eat mysis, just spirulina brine shrimp. He wasn't skinny...