Sleeper Banded Goby Dead

[vieiras]

This morning we found out sleeper banded goby dead. This is our second one. Our local store looked at our tank and had no conclusions for the dead of the first one and suggested a lack of food. Now the second one is dead along with a shark nose goby and we have been feeding several times a day. Fish get marine and seaweed pellets twice a day, plus a frozen cube of pods and some mysis at night. What would be the problem? All of the fish are peaceful (snowflake clown, pajama cardinals, royal gramma, purple fire fish, tomini tang and fox face) All of the parameters are within range:
Salinity 35ppm
Temp 78
Alkalinity 9.5
Calcium 430
Magnesium 1250
Nitrates 8

 

[CuzzA]

Did you qt the fish? It appears there's a sore or injury to the head of the fish. Did you use real ocean live rock? Gobies generally hang out in cracks, crevices, caves and holes. So do pistol and mantis shrimp and predatory worms. You did not provide a lot of background on your system so with the limited information I am just throwing out possible causes.

 

[vieiras]

Some more information on my tank. All fish were quarantined before. We had an ich outbreak before and had our tank run fallow for 60 days. All the rock was dry rock when were were cycling the tank. This tank is 8 months old.

 

[CuzzA]

Well your LFS may be right. How long have you had the fish?

Here's a dirty little secret the LFS's either don't know or don't tell customers. Sand sifting gobies almost always die of starvation. We can rarely populate our sand beds to the level of food they require compared to the vast expanse of the ocean bottom. They are starving to death by the time they make it to our tanks. It may be accomplished with a large refugium, but that would be the exception, not the rule. I do not have experience with this species, but I believe it is a sand sifter.

It's also possible your two tank bosses, the tang and foxface, might have got aggressive with the gobies, including the cleaner.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, but in aquaria it's usually a handful of causes. Water quality/equipment failure, pathogens, starvation, aggression/predation or no tank lid.