Woke up to chunks of clown fish

[kevgib67]

In two years I have only lost 2 fish, clowns. After a few months the one clown bullied the other to death. I replaced it and for over a year all was well. I got home from vacation and the smaller one was beat up by the other clown. I tried to save it but it was to late. I know it’s strange but it may have been the other clown.

 

[BrettE]

Where did you get your rock from?
Is it possible you have a hitchhiker? Like a crab?

It's Marco Rock. I bought it dry. It sat in my dining room for a few months before going into the water.

I've only added fish, a shrimp, and snails. I think I would've noticed a crab tagging along with those, especially if it was large enough to do this.

I'm pretty sure all the snails are snails, and there's not a crab hiding in one of those shells.

Was the fish possibly sick and died, then just ended up in the powerhead?

Maybe? I agree that the powerhead would explain how it got cut up, but I just don't see how it could've gotten in there. Just in case, I'm going to re-work the powerhead guard to include a honeycomb over the output. I'm sure it will reduce the output, but it will also help me sleep better and rule that out in the future.

numbers look to be right in line for 2 month old tank. is the flake/pellet from the auto feeder the only food you put in? could mix it up with some mysis/brine frozen for some more protein.

I have some frozen mysis, but I keep forgetting to throw it in. I will star doing that.

it is hard to lose a fish, i have lost four in the 2.5 years i have been keeping this reef tank and with each one the guilt and sadness is always the same. sometimes you will never know what happened. stinks , but you are doing the right things , keep it up and with each month that passes that tank will be able to support its ecosystem better & better.

Ya, it sucks. We're like 2 months in and lost 2 in 3 days. This morning I was about ready to just say forget it, and quit all together. I hope this gets better.

The worst part here is that I feel like I haven't really learned anything from this. We have some guesses, and we'll take some steps to mitigate those possibilities in the future, but we don't really know what happened. For all I know this can happen again tomorrow, because what really have we changed to prevent this from happening again?

I think we need some cameras on the tank going forward. Then maybe we would at least have a hope of seeing what happened.

 

[BrettE]

In two years I have only lost 2 fish, clowns. After a few months the one clown bullied the other to death. I replaced it and for over a year all was well. I got home from vacation and the smaller one was beat up by the other clown. I tried to save it but it was to late. I know it’s strange but it may have been the other clown.

The two clowns seemed really happy together. Though I admit I'm not a fish, so really how do I know they were happy? I have no idea.

They were almost always together. When we got them, one seemed more dominant, and a touch larger. The more submissive one would even do the thing where they sort of flop to the side. More recently though they seemed to have swapped, and the one that had been smaller seemed maybe slightly larger, and they would both sort of side flop at each other. We mostly noticed this over the last few days.

From what I understand, females will kill another female or a male that doesn't submit, but would they tear up the dead fish? Would a cleaner shrimp tear off pieces of a dead fish? We found two chunk that's maybe represent 25% of the fish. No idea where the rest went.

 

[kevgib67]

Ya, mine seemed happy together and then weren’t. Clowns can be weird! More likely your cuc tore it apart. Hermits and or nassarius and bumblebee snails.

 

[nuxx]

I had MASSIVE powerheads and fish never got injured by them...

But I guess there's always that one...

 

[bryan47caveman]

Have you found any worms?