Gold Head Sleeper goby drastically losing weight

[ClaptonsGhost]

My Gold Head Sleeper goby acts exactly as he always has, is constantly taking up mouthfuls of substrate searching for food, eats like a pig when I put food in the tank, but in the past few months has lost a drastic amount of weight. At first I thought I was imagining it but I just pulled up some old video taken in April and sure enough he was filled out and looking healthy. Now he's all head with a flat body.

What could be causing it? Do fish get cancer? Every time I see it, he brings back awful memories of my late wife in her last months. Again, he behaves normally and never stops looking for food and eats everything I put in the tank except seaweed.

 

[flower]

Hi,

This happened to my sleeper goby....The fauna in the substrate had been depleted and the fish starved... it took months. I was told...That once the belly shrunk ( all head and flat skinny body) the fish kind of absorbed it's own stomach and could no longer feed no matter what.

 

[ClaptonsGhost]

But he's eating. By no longer feed do you mean not eating? I put in like a day and a half's worth of mysis for their morning feeding today, hopefully a lot of it will end up in the substrate. These guys are freakin' ravenous.

 

[pegasus]

He may not be getting the nutrition he needs in his diet. Though nothing is going to be more nutritious than live pods, soaking his food in Selcon can help "put some meat on his bones".

 

[jay0705]

What sometimes happens is they try to eat it, but when filtering the sand the food gets filtered out threw the gills too

 

[ClaptonsGhost]

Sounds like I'll just have to let him go, then when the fauna repopulates I'll get another one. I'm not gonna bother soaking his food in Selcon since the other fish don't know the meaning of "his food". Thanks everybody.