Thought my Goby was dead....

everpresentnoob · Jan 21, 2025

So i have a 32 gallon bio cube that i set up for a toby Puffer as he wouldnt stop eating ANY type of CUC I put in my 75 gallon tank. Puffer is living life in there, but the sand started looking bad so i bought a Diamond Goby. Goby made his home under one of the rocks in the tank and everything was fine. well a month and a half ago, maybe closer to two months my goby dissapeared. didnt see him in the tank for a couple days and got worried. Moved all the rock around and didnt find him. no goby, and no corpse. checked all teh compartments in the back of the tank. no Goby. chalked it up to maybe he jumped when I had the lid open for a waterchange or something. felt bad, but nothing I could do at that point. fast forward to yesterday... my wife called me at work around 8 in the morning to tell me that Lips (my puffer) was missing. How does a puffer go missing?? I knew he ws in the tank when I left for work. i had seen him cuddled up in the rock before I left. She hadn't opened the lid so i knew he couldn't have jumped out. When i finally got home I started moving rocks, combing fingers through the sand but couldn't find anything. no way he died and my little tiny clownfish ate him. My clown is about 1 inch long, if that, puffer is a good three inches. So I know he has to be here somewhere. i start pulling everything out of the back compartments and in chamber three under my pump I see something moving. but its WAY to small to be the puffer... Remove the pump and start fishing with my hand and up comes my missing GOBY!! dude was living with my pump for almost two months!! I put him back in the main tank and he immediatly went back to his home under the rock but kept popping out as if to say "Man its good to be back!!" When I pulled the skimmer out of chamber 1 i found my puffer there so i pulled him out and put him back where he belongs as well.

So far, 24 hours after both went back into the tank they both are doing good, goby is eating and sifting sand like nothing happened at all. I cant believe he lasted that long under the pump in chamber three. Now it kinda has me thinking about the filtering in the tank. I have the intank media basket with floss on top, then a bag of bioballs, then a bag of chemipure elite. Apparently enough stuff gets by all that and into the pump chamber to keep a diamond goby alive for weeks...

So how do i improve the filtering? Lol.

KrisReef · Jan 21, 2025

First. A screen on the overflow teeth.

I like polyfilter and it can be cut to size to fill the entire chamber or trim some pieces to fill the gaps.

everpresentnoob · Jan 22, 2025

KrisReef said:
First. A screen on the overflow teeth.

I like polyfilter and it can be cut to size to fill the entire chamber or trim some pieces to fill the gaps.

I ordered teh fish saver guard from intank for it. as to the filter floss, I use the dual density blue and white floss in the top chamber. But I found that if I cut it to cover the entire top shelf of the rack it would trap air under it with in a few hours and the water would just flow over the sides of the chamber rather than go down through it. So now I cut it a little narrow and leave a quarter inch gap on one edge.