Missing Clownfish <long>

[GTfish]

I just purchased an TR Ocellaris Clownfish yesterday. He was my tanks first fish. The LFS keeps their FO salinity at 1.014, so I did a 7 hour drip acclimation to get him up to my tank's 1.025. I netted him out of the bag and put him in the tank. He swam very quickly up and down the tank, and was very interested in the corners and edges. After several minutes, he started doing laps around the upper parts of the tank. This morning, he had calmed down a bit, and was hovering in place in front of a powerhead. Literally 5 minutes after I saw him swimming around, my roommate noticed that he was missing.

Tank Inhabitants:
1 large astrea snail
3 large mythrax crabs
Brittle star fish (has been beat up by something)
Several large worms w/ long tentacles
remnants of caulerpa algae growth (removed from tank)
something that makes a clicking noise (unknown if pistol shrimp or mantis)


Set up and parameters:
37 gal tank
2 maxijet 600 powerheads
Fluval 204 (no media, just for flow)
Small HOB filter for surface agitation
SG: 1.025
Temp: 80
Amm and Nitrites: 0
Nitrates= about 10 ppm

Any ideas? Is it likely that he died and then got scavenged, or did one of the crabs take him down? If the crab attacked him, I have unspeakable plans for it =). My LR is very porous, and the body could be hidden in any number of crannies.

 

[lando]

Do you have sponges covering the intakes of your powerheads? If not, he may have gotten sucked up into it. Do you have LR that it could be hiding in? Did it jump out of the tank? Let us know what you find out.

 

[GTfish]

Total Meltdown

I CANNOT believe how stupid I was. He was caught in the intake of the powerhead that came used with my tank- with no sponge prefilter on it. To make things even worse, he was swimming in front of that powerhead when I last saw him!! Do clownfish get sucked into these things easily, or was he weakened from stress from the move? His color was looking a little off last night, but this morning he was looking great. Arrrrrggggggghhhhhh $22 and the life of one innocent fish, wasted. Thanks for your help though; I suppose I never realized that they were that vulnerable to getting sucked in.

 

[Atari]

I would get a strainer put on that powerhead intake as soon as possible. Even larger fish have problems when they get too close.

 

[blorkiemom]

Tagging on here--are the plastic strainers that come with the ph's (say, maxijet 1200s) enough? Or are there special sponge ones that can be bought? I've been worrying over this a bit . . .

 

[Atari]

The strainers are fine for fish, but more delicate animals like anemones, cucumbers etc will need sponges.

 

[blorkiemom]

Thanks, Atari! There are sooooo many things to keep an eye on in this hobby . . .

 

[MattP725]

I have heard a few people even say that they had fish get stuck to the plastic strainer tube... I have a foam filter that came with mine and have not had one problem yet.