Pinktail trigger horror story

[jmccown]

So I have/had a pinktail trigger for the last 4 mos. It was about 8" and thick as heck. For the last month my little fish have slowly been disappearing (all the while the pinktail keeps getting fatter). Today I come home from picking up another Sohal tang and notice my pinktail isn't out and about like usual....neither is my last big anthias which was a good 4" long. Well I move around some rocks and lo and behold there it is, it floats out with its' stomach as big as it can possibly be without exploding. The anthias is gone. It has to be in the pinktail's stomach. Is it possible that eating the anthias killed the pinktail? I've seen random nature photos of snakes and stuff eating things that are too large for their stomachs and it kills them. Any ideas/comments. I'll check back in a bit, gonna do a 50g water change to be on the safe side.

 

[LisaD]

I have had frogfish that ate themselves to death, swallowing tankmates I thought would be too big to swallow. I suppose it could happen with a trigger as well. Sorry for your losses. Did you try opening the trigger's stomach to see what was inside?

 

[jmccown]

Nah, I wasn't that interested, but it was obvious. This trigger was waaaay too healthy to just die.