Carpet Surfing Blenny Despite Mesh Cover

ariellemermaid · Jan 23, 2021

Just wanted to report that after many months we had a beautiful bicolor blenny carpet surf despite a DIY mesh cover. We left a 3” gap at the back for HOB gear and maybe a 1” gap max at the front and yet, somehow, he managed to jump out. Conditions were good, he seemed content nipping at the rocks and retreating to his hole in the live rock. We’ve never once seen him jump at the mesh and only free swam to nip at algae or perch on a rock.

JoshH · Jan 23, 2021

I have read somewhere that the vast majority of carpet surfing incidents occur in the first few inches from the glass because fish will swim up the glass and out of the water. Any gaps near the glass edges are of the biggest concern and should be closed up.

So sorry for your loss

MikeTheNewbie · Jan 31, 2021

I started with 1/4" mesh but my goby was out of the tank in just 3 minutes.
Had to go down to a 1/8" mesh. Those little creatures are slim... and persistent.

ariellemermaid · Feb 2, 2021

This blenny was pretty big; definitely didn’t make it out through the mesh. Still to this day not sure what to do differently. I could re-build the screen to take up a little more of the room but eventually I’ll probably add a skimmer and maybe a second auto feeder with nori pellets so it’s hard to plan for changes. It makes sense that fish might follow the glass up and take advantage of any gap, but I feel like I can only do so much. He landed several feet in front of the tank but I’m guessing he got out the back and landed on the top then flopped off the front. Just losing a fish is one thing, but when you do a full quarantine process with copper treatment each and every fish represents a significant time and money investment.

All I can think of is that maybe he was around the gyre pump and got startled when it turned on. Previously it ran at some level 24/7 but now that I’ve added some soft corals I realized the flow was just too much. So I reduced the flow so it now has a random pattern including being off, that’s the only recent change to the tank. I went ahead and added the mesh covers so hopefully that’ll prevent anything from getting snagged; my cleaner shrimp gave me some scares around the pump as well.

SaltISlife · Feb 2, 2021

Sucks. I have glass tops on my 135g. But i have small openeings in places. Ive seen fish jump through them before.. It sucks but im not going to seal 100% of my tank off lol. It needs to breathe.. and if a fish has a death warrant so be it i guess