My Fish slowly dissapear ???

[kbayashi]

My tank has been up for about 3 months. I have a 55gal tank, 120 lb of ls, 50 lb lr, 18 gal sump Berlin turbo protein skimmer, Fluvial 203 canister, 4 x 55w pc's, 2 x 48 in fluorescents, 2 408 aqua clear ph's, 2 scarlet hermits, 2blue leg hermits, 1 stag horn hermit, 2 large snails, purple starfish, green bristle star, emerald crab, cleaner shrimp, horseshoe crab, green star polyp, pearl bubble anemone, assorted mushrooms.
I bought form the lfs a red fire fish and a very small perc clown. By the second night the fire fish was gone and a week later (last night) I found an orange fin floating in my tank. Both fish were eating and had good color up to the moment they disappeared. All of the test are good and all the other stuff looks like they are thriving.
Can anyone guess why I can’t keep my fish alive? My guess is that someone is eating them (but i don't know who?)or I may have too much current in my tank that over works the fish (mag 5 return pump, Fluvial 203 canister, and 2 x 408 aqua clear ph's).
I added a royal grama a week before all of this but the last surviving damsel I used to cycle the tank killed him within the first 3 days. Thus adding to my frustration. I removed the damsel and donated him to a friends tank prior to adding any other fish.
Thanks in advance for any input!

 

[bradburycf]

I'm sorry to hear about your horrible luck! It is possible that you brought a stowaway into your system with your lr. I've heard accounts of people encountering trouble like this with mantis shrimp being accidently introduced. These are nasty little buggers, but there are traps available (so I've heard) to aid in the capture of the little critters. Perhaps it isn't biological. Are there any exposed intakes that could be trapping your fish. Is the LR stable? A settling mound of LR could also trap a fish.

 

[kbayashi]

I spend hours on end every night watching my tank every night and I’ve never noticed any thing unusual crawling around. I’ve even took some time to watch the tank after the lights have turned off. I noticed one night that the bristle star was really big (like he ate something), but in my opinion, he would have been a lot bigger if he ate my fire fish.
My fluvial skims the top of the water, the sump is using a cs90 overflow by CPR, and the ph's have the ad-on intake filter on both. I can’t believe that any fish would get stuck unless they were really sick or already dead. Everything has screens or filters that I can clearly see. I don’t think my intakes had any role in the disappearance of my fish.
I think that there was too much current in my tank which put added stress (along with the trauma of the transportation and a new tank) on my fish that they both died. Then they got eaten by someone. With my equipment listed in the previous post, could it be possible to have too much current in the tank? But if I had too much current, wouldn’t my corals suffer? I think it's the current because the clown always looked like he was a struggle to stay in one place. I’m confused. It's frustrating to try to fix a problem if you can't figure out what causing it.
Thanks again for your input.

 

[mobikobeyob]

I would say its a mantis shrimp. it took me about a month to figgure out what that clicking sound was. then the pile of crabshells kinda gave him away. lol do you hear a clicking once and a while? if so its a mantis. good luck Mobi

 

[rangermonroe]

Not my experience, by my LFS told me that the green brittle star has been known to eat fish. hth

 

[piscesblue]

Green Bristle stars will eat DEAD fish. I never take out dead occupants as my star eats them within a few hours. Whenever your star's middle is all puffy, he just ate something sizable. I wouldn't worrie about him eating anything live.

 

[byrself]

i feel your pain, i have lost 2 fish and 2 peppermint shrimp mysteriously over about 3 weeks time. haven't narrowed the culprit down, but you can see from my livestock listing below that i don't have and weird starfish or anything like that.. just live rock, and the pistol shrimp that came with the live rock. last night i noticed what looked like the big claw of my pistol floating around, although i don't know if it was a morph or what is actually left of it. my suspicions are leading me to think it's a mantis shrimp causing the damage, but i'm not 100% sure yet. sure is aggravating though. here'a good article to check out though...<a href="http://saltaquarium.about.com/library/weekly/aa110498b.htm?terms=MANTIS%2520SHRIMP" target="_blank">mantis, or not? </a>