Originally Posted by
deejeff442
http:///forum/post/3233238
who hates damsels?
i love mine had him for a long time maybe 8 yrs.he dont bother anything.
if you cant find the fish he might still be in there mine hides so good i sometime cant even find him with a flashlight then a day or so later hes out .
i agree with joe if the water was colored ammonia was probably the case.
once they get poisoned its tough to recover.
but it takes alot to kill a damsel they can almost live in the toilet.
like everyone said this aint like freshwater to be successful at this hobbie you need alot of patience.at this point i would not bother looking for the fish if he is dead the crabs will take care of him and this will also kick off the cycle.
let the tank go for a few weeks checking water level along the way.
I like how we told him that he didn't want a damsel. Who are we to tell him what he does and does not want?
When fish are stressed, they hide. I'm not trying to give you false hope by any means, just stating a fact. Try really hard to find the body. Unless you have a lot of hermits, it is going to take them a while to pick apart a fish, so keep looking.
It sounds like this fish's death had nothing to do with his tank/water parameters.
I would like to point out that in order to be successful at freshwater, you need a lot of patience as well. Granted, saltwater does take more. I'm not arguing, I understand what you mean and everything is relative.
On topic, it doesn't matter if your tank has perfect conditions for fish. What's more important is that your tank has perfect consistency in water parameters. I will third or fourth the notion that you wait it out another week before buying a new fish.
One last thing. I would like to use this thread for a quick biology lesson. The nitrogenous bacteria in your tank lives on the surfaces; it does not thrive in the water column itself. If it lived in the water column itself, then that fish would not have died from ammonia poisoning.
Okay...I think that's it.
