Purple Firefish living with pistol shrimp?

[Savant]

So I added a purple fire-fish to my tank about 3 weeks ago. All went well for 30 minutes or so, then the fire-fish darted down one of my pistol shrimp holes and I haven't seen him come out since.
I thought he must be dead because...well because I haven't seen him for 3 weeks. Imagine my surprise when I was looking in the tank after lights out and got the briefest glimpse of the head of the fire-fish deep in a pistol shrimp tunnel.

The other fish in the tank are a bicolor foxface, engineer goby, flame hawkfish, 2 percula clowns, 3 pajama cardinals, flasher wrasse and a royal gramma

Should I expect the fire fish to eventually come out? Is he going to starve himself? Im not really sure what to do because it would be impossible to extract the fish without completely breaking down the tank.

 

[peasofme]

they are easily scared. he is probably scared of the other fish and may never come out. not much you can do.

 

[Betta132]

Just use a turkey baster to get some food down to him. Might help him gain confidence.
Some of the less aggressive pistols have been known to let non-shrimpgoby fish stay with them. Firefish, being slender hole-dwellers with no desire to eat a pistol shrimp, are one of the more commonly seen examples. Firefish are shy, and yours might just have decided that he'd like to be down there with the snappy-thing instead of out with all the scary things.

 

[ginpang]

just use a turkey baster to get some food down to him. Might help him gain confidence.
Some of the less aggressive pistols have been known to let non-shrimpgoby fish stay with them. Firefish, being slender hole-dwellers with no desire to eat a pistol shrimp, are one of the more commonly seen examples. Firefish are shy, and yours might just have decided that he'd like to be down there with the snappy-thing instead of out with all the scary things.

+1

 

[Savant]

yea ive been squirting a little bit of food in is hole since i saw him there. Saw him again yesterday so I know he is still alive, I just worry about him slowly starving...