haguc
New Member
Hello all, I am fairly new to the SW fish world. I just got a tank 75 gal with a sump about 3 months ago and have been working on getting everything set up. The tank was used when I got it and it came with plenty of sand as well as about 60 lbs of live rock. Now for my problem:
I have added a few fish and they have been doing well. They have all eaten well and I haven't really seen any with any specific problems. In the first batch of fish I got some damsels, they were all doing well for the first few days. Then one day I came home from work and there was a fish missing. I searched high and low for it (visually) and couldn't find it. I didn't think too much of it as in my fresh water days a fish could have disappeared and just gotten eaten, so I was down to 5 fish. The very next day I had another fish go missing. With only four fish left and all the fish still eating well I figured I had a problem. When I asked people they told me that I proly had a crab of some sort killing them so I proceeded to make a crab trap (coke bottle with cut off funnel (opening size about 1.5") and baited with freeze dried krill. I caught nothing. I added more a couple days later and caught nothing. I went out and got a couple more damsels. One of them died overnight after I got it home, it never looked too healthy from when I got it in the tank, but I found that fish dead on the bottom and nothing had touched it. About a week later I added another damsel three stripe and after a day or two it went missing. When it disappeared I took out all of the live rock and inspected it one piece at a time (I figured a fish that distinctly colored would be easy to find.) From the visual inspection I found nothing. The only remains of any of the fish that went missing that I found was the skeleton of the first fish that went missing. All of the fish that went missing were the smaller ones, but none of them had been getting picked on and they all ate well. It has been approximately a month and I have not had any more fish go missing. I just added two new damsels yesterday and am hoping it is the end of my saga. Is there anything else that I should be checking for or thinking of? I took out my makeshift trap and have working a bit on getting my sump tank set up the way I want.
Someone had said I could at night use a flashlight with a red filter on it to look in the tank at night and check to see what is going on and they don't see the red light? Also, is there a different/better bait I should use?
I want to get some nicer fish, but I don't want an expensive fish to go missing.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!!
I have added a few fish and they have been doing well. They have all eaten well and I haven't really seen any with any specific problems. In the first batch of fish I got some damsels, they were all doing well for the first few days. Then one day I came home from work and there was a fish missing. I searched high and low for it (visually) and couldn't find it. I didn't think too much of it as in my fresh water days a fish could have disappeared and just gotten eaten, so I was down to 5 fish. The very next day I had another fish go missing. With only four fish left and all the fish still eating well I figured I had a problem. When I asked people they told me that I proly had a crab of some sort killing them so I proceeded to make a crab trap (coke bottle with cut off funnel (opening size about 1.5") and baited with freeze dried krill. I caught nothing. I added more a couple days later and caught nothing. I went out and got a couple more damsels. One of them died overnight after I got it home, it never looked too healthy from when I got it in the tank, but I found that fish dead on the bottom and nothing had touched it. About a week later I added another damsel three stripe and after a day or two it went missing. When it disappeared I took out all of the live rock and inspected it one piece at a time (I figured a fish that distinctly colored would be easy to find.) From the visual inspection I found nothing. The only remains of any of the fish that went missing that I found was the skeleton of the first fish that went missing. All of the fish that went missing were the smaller ones, but none of them had been getting picked on and they all ate well. It has been approximately a month and I have not had any more fish go missing. I just added two new damsels yesterday and am hoping it is the end of my saga. Is there anything else that I should be checking for or thinking of? I took out my makeshift trap and have working a bit on getting my sump tank set up the way I want.
Someone had said I could at night use a flashlight with a red filter on it to look in the tank at night and check to see what is going on and they don't see the red light? Also, is there a different/better bait I should use?
I want to get some nicer fish, but I don't want an expensive fish to go missing.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!!
