Gobie V5.0 gone

[CandyCane]

Well I'm looking for advise on how to keep a Diamond Goby alive and in my tank or a great sand sifting alternative. To date we have lost 5 Diamond Goby's to night time bouts of flying fish syndrome...(they jumped). After the first loss we put egg crate over the top, except for the area that the returns flow into. We have found 3 pices of fish jerky the other 2 have just vanished. Any tips would on how to keep these little guys in our tank would be great.

Thanks in advance,

Candice and Chris V.

 

[wontonflip]

Well, all these jumper fish are very adept at jumping...so yes, they find the smallest possible hole and get through it. Just add an small piece on those li'l gaps. I, too, have put egg crate covers on my tank due to firefish jumpers.

As for the ones that disappeared...my guess is they died, and your cuc ate them like they're supposed to. Are your parameters good? Is the tank just really a month old? Maybe it wasn't done cycling. What else do you have in there as far as livestock goes? Definitely check your parameters.

But in the end, sometimes they just die for no reason at all -- maybe it's the lfs that you got it from.

OH do you hear "clicking' in your tank :D LOL Sometimes, you pick up stray mantis shrimp ;)

 

[CandyCane]

No the tank is older, and our water checks out, the one month was the amount of time/experience we had with owning a tank.

 

[wontonflip]

Ok...so it's possible you just had bad luck with the fish. Maybe try another LFS, or order from an online store like liveaquaria.com or something

And like I said, it's also possible there's something in there that attacked them. Some of the reefers here have had hitchhikers who hide out, and they never see them...they'll just start noticing unexplained disappearances. Sometimes they end up finding a mantis shrimp hidden in the rocks.

Do you have dogs or cats? maybe one of them ate the blennys if they jumped out.

 

[Tristan]

How are you acclimating them? Whats your salinity and temperature? was the tank ever dried out?

 

[CandyCane]

We float the bag and introduce water over the course of an hour or so. Our temp is typiclly between 78.7-79.7 and our salinity is around 1.022 ish. They never go missing right away, its normally a week or so after they are in the tank.

 

[wontonflip]

What other livestock do you have in there? and have you tried any other fish other than a goby? Clowns are always hardy fish :)

You could stand to raise your salinity a little more, but I wouldn't think that's the problem.

 

[Tristan]

ok your salinity is low and salinity is best at 1.025-1.026.

You might want to try the Drip method for acclimation. ive tried the method you used and the drip method and there is a huge difference in survival rates.

Your temp is pretty good.

 

[Melosu58]

Aquarium Advice - Aquarium Forum Community - View Single Post - Plastic net for Tank cover

Try some of this.

 

[yote]

+1 All the above.
I finally gave up on keeping a watchmen goby.That is one fish I will not try again until they develop lungs and learn to breath air.

 

[CandyCane]

So if it ends up being a mantis shrimp, how do i get that little bugger out of my tank? I have heard they are really tough to catch.

 

[Bifferwine]

The best way is to figure out which rock it lives in -- they will usually stay in the same area. Then remove that rock and do a freshwater dip on it to get the mantis scrambling out.

But first you have to find out for sure if you have a mantis. Obviously, you can't attribute the deaths of the fish that jumped to it, so it's possible but not likely if you haven't heard any clicking or seen a mantis.

 

[CandyCane]

Ok, Im thinking i may have some kind of predator, Im looking around and my little yellow tailed chromi is no where to be found. I did a test and my water is fine, there are no little pices of fish jerky outside the tank. I'm really bummed out, so in the last 3 weeks we have lost a domino damsel, a cleaner wrase and now our little yellow tail, with no sign of a corpse at all. At least with the Gobies we found the bodies outside the tank. Is it possible that the predator/shrimp could spook the Gobies and make them jump?

 

[Tristan]

do you hear sounds similar to finger snaps?

 

[CandyCane]

I dont thinks so....I have not added any new rock to my tank in months, so this guy would have been in there for a while now.

 

[yote]

When it comes to getting away from predators,the most comon response is to dart straight up.So its extremely possible that was the cause of the jumps.

 

[yote]

BTW
Not all mantis shrimp make that clicking.There is another type that uses a spear to catch their prey.

 

[wontonflip]

BTW
Not all mantis shrimp make that clicking.There is another type that uses a spear to catch their prey.

Yote would know...he's king of mantis ;)

 

[andysgirl8800]

Predators are not welcome visitors in my tank. In terms of the goby, I've kept several gobies pretty well, and my diamonds seem to last the longest. First, I should mention that I have a canopy covering my tank, so jumping is not an issue. I have lost gobies to dinoflagellates in my tank (poisoned them). Most of the sleeper gobies sift the sand for little tidbits of uneaten food, meaty morsels,and especially pods. If you do not have a refugium, or a strong pod population, you will need to feed the goby. They are slower than other fish and would not be able to compete very well with the speedy little damsels in your tank. You would really need to try to target feed them with a feeding rod or turkey baster. This is all bsaed on the assumption that you DO NOT have a predator in your tank. If you DO, then no amount of target feeding or tank topper will save your little fishies. Let us know what you discover.