weird stuff in the tank last night

[moulton1853]

Woke to both porcelain crab and cleaner shrimp molt. One of my blue green chromis just disappeared. I checked ever where except under the rocks and it's just gone. Have a glass canopy so it can't jump either but looked anyways. Checked the water prams and everything seems ok, just nitrates jumped up to 50. Just did a small water change and cleaned out the skimmer so it will come down. Very small ammonia is coming up only .1. Can a fish that was perfectly healthy looking and eating just 12 hrs prior just die and disappear? Everything in there now seems happy and ate today except the shrimp and crab but I think they are still hardening up.

 

[melypr1985]

Fish disappear sometimes without us knowing why. could be disease, but more commonly somebody killed/ate him. The ammonia you detected could be from the fish rotting under a rock somewhere. You shouldn't have any ammonia in a well cycled tank. So if it wasn't the missing/dead fish causing the rise then that needs some exploration. In my tank i have never seen an ammonia spike from a dead fish, so there's food for thought.

 

[moulton1853]

Thanks. My tank is still pretty young, only about 4 mons now. I found half it's body the next day. Still have no idea why it happened as everything seems normal again now.