91 ZERO Posted October 22, 2014 Report Share Posted October 22, 2014 Don't know if this is unusal or not but it certainly left me astounded! About 3 1/2 months ago we introduced a rather large Foxface Rabbitfish to the tank, and within a day our Six Line Wrasse disappeared. We thought he may have been spooked and was simply hiding as they do. A couple days after that and lots of searching with a torch in the coral rock etc revealed nothing, nor on the off chance in the sump (its a Aqua One 275 Cube). I even went as far as removing all the coral and rock in the tank to search. We suspected he may have been attacked by the other fish and nipped at until he was no more. Which sucked as he was a beautiful little fish with real character. Fast foward 3 1/2 MONTHS to last weekend and while vacuuming up the dirt in the bottom of the sump as part of the weekly water change I spot movement behind the return pump - the Wrasse! Albeit somewhat discoloured and very skinny. What must have happened was he somehow got over the grille in the tank, went down though all the piping which spills out onto a very large bit of semi-submerged coral rock in the sump (sits in the segregated spot in the sump where bioballs/foam usually sit), flipped over the rock until he fell into the sump water and subsequently made the rock his home and feeding on any scraps that may have fallen his way. He's very good at hiding so in the 18 odd water changes I have done since he went missing (nearly full drainage of water in sump each time which would have left him high and dry at times!), I never once saw him. Crazy! (and yes I have now put some plastic over the grille). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjansss Posted October 23, 2014 Report Share Posted October 23, 2014 The same kinda thing happened to me when i was moving house i cleared out every thing in my tank into a large bucket (inculding fish and not the gravel) but i could not find one of my louches went though all the gravel and i did not find a thing so i assumed it had died and been eaten so i moved the tank with a liltte bit of water in it i always do that and about teo hours later started to set it back up at the new house the little bit of water still in the tank was now very cold and a couple nights later i turned on my fish tanks light (during the night) to check on my nocturnal catfish and i see my louch alive and heathy :happy2: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colour_genes Posted October 25, 2014 Report Share Posted October 25, 2014 Yeah, I drained a tank down to gravel level, left it 5 days in the middle of winter in an unheated garage. When I refilled it, 2 guppy fry from the previous inhabitants popped up out of the gravel, happy as. Tougher than we give them credit for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fmueller Posted October 25, 2014 Report Share Posted October 25, 2014 If you have a sump, in my experience it is totally impossible to avoid fish from going down there - especially fry. I used to have a 240G Tanganyika tank with two 45G sump containers, and I tried everything to secure the overflows to no avail. All you can do is secure the overflows against big fish that might actually block the piping, and make the sump secure for those fish that do go down there, so you can rescue them when they eventually are found. The large number of fry I always found in the sump made me wonder if females of mouthbrooding cichlid might have a preference for spitting where there is a strong current - maybe to disperse the fry quickly over a larger area and make it less likely that one predator picks up the lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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