Dead diamond goby

[Caleb423]

Hello everyone, I am trying to get an understanding of what happened to my diamond goby. He has been in my tank for 3 months (2 year old tank) He was very active and eating well as of three days ago (feeding pods and prepared food).

Two days ago he went missing, I found him hiding under a rock yesterday, the only thing I noticed that looked odd where he had his gills opened very wide. Today I found him hanging out from under another rock dead.

Only thing that seemed odd was the he had some dark coloration along his back.

He recently had a run in with one of my now gone emerald crabs that took off half of his top lip. He was doing good even immediately after this incident, Eating well and healing nicely with no signs of infection.

Just trying to keep history from repeating its self, Thanks!

Three days ago

Today

 

[Seadragon1]

The gills look red. Does his tank mates have red gills or are they gasping for air?

 

[Caleb423]

Every one else looks fine, with no signs of anything

 

[Macdaddynick1]

it might have starved , i haven't kept these guys before but i think they need deeper sand-bed than what you have.

 

[Caleb423]

I guess that could be possible but he was eating frozen food every day, plus I was adding pods for him

 

[Humblefish]

The gills look red.

They do. Typically this means ammonia burn so I would test for that just to be on the safe side. I would also drop the body in FW (tap is fine since he is deceased) to check for flukes. Use a black (or dark colored) bucket; if he has flukes you should see tiny white oval dots laying on the bottom (see below).

 

[Caleb423]

I have a ammonia alert badge in the tank and it is and always reads <0.02ppm. I wish I would have thought about the fw dip before hand, as I have already disposed of him. Thank you so much for the input everybody!