MISSING.... help me figure it out (1 Viewer)

[alstang1]

Ok I woke up this morning and one of my purple tipped anenomies was missing. I just figured he moved over night and I could not see him. No big deal.

When I just got home, I saw a piece of meat on the tank bed. It appeared to be crab meat. I picked it up and it had the same texture as crab meat. The same appearance as the bottom of the missing anenomy. Now, the only thing I can think of is that he got eaten.

My question is what could have eaten the WHOLE thing between 10pm and 5am? He was quite large....about as big as a tennis ball when not closed up. Easily 10 times larger than any of the damsels in my tank. 15 times larger than the one diamond gobby I have.

I don't think the snales could have eaten him.

I just got 2 clown fish on Saturday and neither of them have eaten anything at all since they have been in the tank. One of them died last night. The other seems fine. Could he have killed it out of stress?????

All 3 of my power heads have sponge filters on them so there is nothing mechanical that could have sucked it up.

I have no cats in the house and my greenwing macaw stays in the cage when we go to bed, so pets are out of the question. I just can not figure out what could have possibly happened.

Are any of my fish known to eat anenomies?

To give you an idea, both were about the same size. Here is the other.

All we could find left of it was a piece about half the size of an eraser tip.

Pardon the spelling..... dyslexia rules my life.

Al

 

[SeanB]

Maybe you have a hitchiking crab or shrimp on your lr that you are unaware of.

 

[Guest]

Don't let their size fool ya

I think that anemone's aren't a whole lot of tissue, think how small they get when fully retracted. It's basically a balloon (pop, sorry ) with a muscular foot.

I'd keep checking the nitrates to see if it's not decomposing out of sight somewhere.

Dunno what could have eaten it, tho

 

[alstang1]

Re: Don't let their size fool ya

I think that anemone's aren't a whole lot of tissue, think how small they get when fully retracted. It's basically a balloon (pop, sorry ) with a muscular foot.

I'd keep checking the nitrates to see if it's not decomposing out of sight somewhere.

Dunno what could have eaten it, tho

Yeah, I ran a test first thing when I got home. Only thing I found odd, is my PH was finally at a safe level. 8.4 instead of 7.9
Everything else was at zero except very slight traces of amonia (as usual)
Al

 

[robrog]

Anemones can become amazingly small if they are unhappy and then turn to almost nothing if they die. My guess is that it wasn't eaten, it just died and was totally deflated. They can be pretty sensitive to water quality and with a new setup it can be difficult to keep water quality high and everything happy.

 

[alstang1]

Mystery solved.


He was moving durring the night and even tho there is sponge on my power heads, there is a small hole in the bottom of the sponge. He was sucked up into a 1200 flow pump. I found parts of him in the blade.

Al

 

[KarenB]

Do a big water change today.

We had a really groovy green BTA that waltzed into our powerhead one day......bits of green everywhere. It's amazing how they can fit into such a small area. Make sure you provide enough flow, because it's possible it wasn't getting enough.

 

[alstang1]

We will do the change. I was guessing 3 power heads at 1200 gph was enough for a starter 75 gal. More oppinions on this please.

Al

 

[KarenB]

How you use the powerheads is important, also. I have mine aimed at the glass, not into the tank itself. This created eddies and swirls and an irregular pattern of flow. For instance, put one on each side glass and aim them towards the back, and then put a third one and aim it towards the front glass. You'll be amazed at how much more the water seems to move.

 

[SeanB]

The rule of thumb is 10x your water volume per hour so 1200 gph is plenty. What power heads are you using? If it is the mj 1200's, those are 295 gph, so you'd need 4 to get 1180 gph.

I only ask, because that is what I have on my 75 gal.

 

[alstang1]

2 x maxijet 1200
1 x no idea 1200

Al