Two Missing Fish

[Holygrail45]

Hello,

Just curious, Im relatively new to this hobby and have a 40 gallon tank with fish and coral. I added some damsels to my tank a week ago, and out of 4...only two remain. The two missing damsels were the smallest too.

I suppose my question is...would a large bubble tip anenome eat a small fish like that? Its either the bubbletip or a medium size rock crab that came with the live rock when I first got the tank. The other fish in there are harmless (percula clowns, green damsels, peppermint shrimp, frogspawn coral, xenia, carnation coral).

Any idea? They are no where to be found, they have been MIA for 2 days now.

 

[hgbarwick]

I would take the rock crab out of your tank. I have had a long tentacle anenome eat my coperbanded butterfly once. It could be the buble tip though.

 

[stykthyn]

my guess is that the fish expired due to natural means and the crab made short work of them. i would remove him. a sick/sleeping fish makes for an easy meal.

 

[hgbarwick]

yes remove the crab.

 

[Holygrail45]

Thank you both. I've decided to remove that crab...although A) Finding Him, then B) Extracting him, and finally C) What to do with him? are all going to be pretty difficult feats to accomplish. Oh well, I'll do it for the only small fish I still have in my tank

Maybe it is that bubbletip. Oh well, no more small fish for me.

 

[hgbarwick]

Once you catch the crab give him to your LFS

 

[stykthyn]

I had a banded coral shrimp that went homicidal a few months ago. took out my male ocellaris which was one of my strongest breeders. I ended up tearing down the entire tank to get that thing out. He was sentenced to life in the trigger tank after that. His life sentence was like 5 minutes, but man I felt good watching him get it.

 

[Holygrail45]

oh man...I wouldn't want to cross your Court. Yeah, I think Im going to have to get this guy out...I just dont want to move the whole tank around, my Bubble Tip has wedged himself in such a position that moving rock without tearing him would be near surgical.

Wish me luck!

 

[stykthyn]

if you have the room try to cut the top off a soda bottle and leave some food in it. hopefully the crab will venture in after it and you can pull him out.

 

[raoul]

We had to catch peppermint shrimp a while back, they were terrorizing our tank, those are hard to catch. You can see them, but they see the net coming and move pretty fast! We knew they had a high food drive, so we cut WAY back on the food for a day or two so they were nice and hungry, and we left the net in there. Then, we put some shrimp pellets in the net and right as my husband was telling me it probably wouldn't work, the first shrimp went right into the net!
I don't know if something like this would work for your crab, but I thought I would pass it along, especially if you don't have room to try the soda bottle. You may be able to put a very tempting morsel of food in the net and he may just go right in.
Eventually we'll get more peps, but only once we have a fuge to place them in, they won't be going back into the display tank!