RIP Jaws :(

EvilMel

is a serious goby fanatic
So he died.

I'm not sure why he died...as is usual when fish die.

Everyone else in the tank is healthy and happy as can be.

He was always a pretty sensitive little guy. He did really well from the beginning, then when I decided to mess with his burrow to give him something to do he stopped eating for a bit and got fairly thin.

He'd been fine though because that was months ago and he was back up to a healthy weight again (after feeding him all the time).

I did have a slow salinity change over the past week due to an issue that I don't care to discuss on the forum. But let's just say the salinity may have dropped from about 1.025 to about 1.021 over the past week or more.

The first thing I really noticed him doing was that lately he seemed to change his burrows more (perching in front of different holes on different days, ones he normally did not perch in front of). Then a couple of days ago he moved to a spot in the back corner of the tank that wasn't dug out very much. Not THAT odd in my opinion.

Then last night, I saw that he was at the top of the tank, face pointed straight up, tail pointed down...and it looked like he was gasping for air out of the water. I also noticed that his back half seemed to be fairly devoid of scales and his fins looked kinda frayed/rough but not nipped. I knew that something was wrong with him at that point. I went into the other room once he'd swam back down to the bottom of the tank and ate dinner. When I came back into the room he was obviously in respiratory distress.

He couldn't swim properly and was sorta gasping for air, really bad. Nathan got really upset and yelled out "what's happening to Jaws?!?" He wasn't going to make it so I picked him up, trying to turn him back over and keep him from trying to swim.

He was just getting worse and worse. So I took him out of the tank and put him in the freezer to make his death faster. He went to sleep in the freezer really quickly and it was over.

I don't know why he died. When I went back in there after eating dinner, I did notice that in addition to half his scales being sloughed off, the right side of his eye/face looked like it was covered in a white film/shroud or something. I don't know if it was him producing some sorta slime from stress or what.

I don't know how old Jaws was. He was pretty big, but that doesn't seem like a "died of old age" kind of death to me. It couldn't be something like ich, obviously, he had no spots and my neon goby was darting around the tank the whole time.

Seems like if it were some sort of disease that it would have also taken out the blenny, neon goby, or high fin red banded goby. Ya know?

Anyways...I wanted to tell you guys because I know some of you really liked Jaws. We're pretty upset over here. I don't lose fish very often, so I'm taking it kinda badly.
 
That sucks... I don't know of any diseases that cause scales to slough off... Might check the disease forum...
 
It must have been some kinda stress response or just some kind of weird thing going on with him. I have no idea. I don't care why it happened, other than that I don't want it to happen to my other fish.

I'm just sad that he's gone, more than anything else.

I will get over it.

I guess now is the perfect time to start thinking about getting a few catalina gobies, later down the line, since the tank is so cold (and since I've got that over-sized chiller to keep it cold in the summer).
 
I thought so too Kim. He was really cool (second only to Priscilla as far as favorite fish I've had). Thank goodness Priscilla is still going strong!

I hate to be an internet sadface (god knows) but I just went to feed the tank and Jaws wasn't there to eat out of my hand. It's a bit more depressing than I thought it would be.
 
Sorry to hear about Jaws Mel.
It's no fun to lose a pet.

It's hard to say sometimes what causes a fish loss, but I don't think jawfish are generally very long-lived

Catalina gobies aren't really long-lived either, but they would make for a really neat chilled tank display.
 
that sucks..but i bet Matt is right. I think that any animal that were the male broods the eggs. have a short life cycle.since they can reproduces a lot faster then were the female hold or lays eggs
 
A few years back, I also had a blue dot jawfish in my tank. This was before I realized I had that mantis... anyway, one day the jawfish perished without a trace, but in the days leading up that, he displayed physical symptoms very similar to what you described, Mel. Missing scales and a generally "frayed" look on his back half. If I remember correctly, his coloration on that end of his body looked really washed out, too. The only reason I could see it pretty well was because he had built his burrow up against the front of my tank - it was like one of those ant farms.

So maybe it's a disease specific to this species, or maybe it's just their way of reacting to stress (like the stress of being hunted by the shrimp whose name must not be spoken).

Anyway, sorry you lost him Mel.

Jeff (vol_reefer)
 
Matt/Dave, I mentioned to Nathan that I didn't think they lived all that long. He was wild caught so who knows what his age was. But it just seemed like such an odd behavior.

Jeff...I think it's probably the same stress behavior. Mine was VERY washed out looking on his back half and definitely had a "frayed" look about him. He did the same thing with his burrow the last couple of days...built a burrow right on the glass in the back right corner.

I'm kinda surprised that catalina gobies don't live that long. I mean, I don't expect them to live 30 years or anything, but since green banded gobies seemed to go for at least a few years, I thought maybe the catalinas were similar. I'll check that out. With smaller fish, it's almost easier to accept them dying in a year or two because they're so tiny. For some reason that seems more acceptable to me. hah hah.

edit: I did an internet search. The information I found is mostly about pearly jawfish. It said that they live 5-8 years, which seemed really long to me. I thought they lived more like one year, but who knows.

edit again: Apparently there is conflicting information (shocking, I know). Another source said they live 2-3 years in the wild, on average.

Regardless...sucks.
 
So sorry to hear this Mel - I know hopw fond of jaws you were.

As stated it stinks to lose a pet. More-especially when you don't know why.
 
Sorry Mel

We can sure get attached to living things -- almost all/any living things. Actually some of us get attached to not living things.
 
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