Fish missing in action

[richardh]

I have a 17 gallon tank with 5 red eye tetras, 2 platy and 2 yoyo loaches. The last couple of days I have only seen 4 of the 5 tetras and I am at a loss where it could be. The back of the tank is densely planted, but you can normally spot the fish. There is nothing floating or on the bottom. The tank has a hood, so no jumpers. Where is it? Could it have been eaten? I did notice that of the 5, one of these didn't seem to grow like the others and was very shy. I suspect this is the one missing. Surely some part of the fish would have been left to see. I have noticed a slight 0.25 ammonia increase which seems to coincide. I am going to check levels later as I did a PWC.

 

[Shane l]

Check your whole filter the pipes and everything

 

[Scouser]

Well I found a dead tetra in the filter box of my rekord 600.

Not a nice find!

Check every nook and cranny with a small hole in it!

 

[Mumma.of.two]

Fish will eat dead fish. It's possible the others ate it before you had a chance to find it. Imo it sounds like it did pass away if you had some ammonia.

 

[richardh]

There are lots of hiding places in caves, ornamental rocks and plants, but it is not exactly difficult to spot them. No way it could have got into the internal filter. The inlet grill is too small and if anything gets near the outlet it is quickly relocated to the other side of the tank!

All I can say is that they must have eaten it really quickly everything points to it.

I will be relocating some of the plants to a bigger tank in the next week, so hopefully it will turn up. Otherwise i've lost my first fish

 

[richardh]

*update*
found the little guy at the very back of the tank. He had passed

 

[LyndaB]

Sorry you lost your fish. It's amazing how quickly the others will consume a fish, under normal circumstances. Kind of surprised that you found a corpse.

You took all the right steps, including knowing you had an ammonia spike. Good detective work.

 

[richardh]

Yes, I was very surprised. It didn't look to have been even nibbled at. Not nice to lose a fish, especially my first one but I suppose I better get used to it in this hobby!