Disappearing fish! Mystery!

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Finzzup

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Dec 1, 2002
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NW Iowa
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I cannot figure this one out. In my 6G Eclipse, I had two Neons, two White Clouds and then about 3 weeks ago, I added two Platies. This aquarium is in my office at work. It gets regular water changes, all readings are always normal and the fish are fed each day from Monday - Friday. They are not fed on Saturday or Sunday except if I come in to work.

Now, all I have are the two female Platies. The other 4 fish are GONE! They disappeared one at a time over the last two weeks and there is not a trace of them left. They can't jump out and they didn't get into the filter or bio-wheel - I checked. I also pulled out all the silk plants and kind of 'raked' the gravel looking for them.

They also disappeared overnight during the week, not the weekends. My last Neon was there on Thursday at 5 p.m. -- and gone on Friday at 7 a.m.

Does anybody have a clue as to what happened? Are my platies eating the other fish???? They're not aggressive at all although they chase each other. And, if they did eat them -- why aren't there any bones or bodies left?

I guess I'll go get a male Platy and add him to the tank today -- but I sure loved those little Neons!

:(
 
I ran into similar problem before. I add 5 neon to my 55g tank a few weeks ago to join another 2 larger neon in the tank along with a few angels and silver dollar etc.. However, the new neons start dissappearing quickly. At the end of 2 weeks, I still only have my original 2 larger neon left. The same thing happens when I try to add glo-lite.
 
Angels eat neons, if the angel is big enough and the neon small enough.
 
I would suspect the platies. They may be bullying the smaller fish, and then dining on the corpses. It doesn't take long for a small fish to completely disappear. I had 8-10 danios in a well stocked, planted tank many moons ago. The danios were all around the 2-3 year mark. Slowly, they just disappeared. I never saw a body, and chalked it up to lots of piggy bottom feeders and oppurtunistic scavengers (ie, every other fish in the tank).

Sorry.
 
Thanks OrionGirl -- that's kind of what I suspected and if you're thinking the same thing then I feel like my thoughts are validated. :)

Poor fish -- they were so cute. But I don't want it to happen again, so I'll go get another Platy today.
 
Just to clear up a point...Most fish don't have bones the same way mammals do. Their bones tend to be very small and thin, and few and far between. Even most larger species don't have as solid a skeleton as even a mouse. Fish contain lots of cartilege, especially as juveniles. In some species, they don't develop true bony bits until they've hit adulthood, when their bones calcify. When you consider that most fish have a bony spine, skull and jaw, with only a few other true bony parts, there's not much chance of finding them. This isn't the case for the armoured cats--I've found remains whenever I've lost a cory/cat/pleco.

Even the fossil records support this. Totally different conditions, but when fish fossils are found, it's frequently when there were mass die-offs, presumably killing the fish which would dine on the bones as well.
 
i know its not exactly a worthy thought but have you considered someone might be taking them? maybe not someone in the office staff..is there a night janitor? just thought id mention this as a possiblity though oriongirl is probably right
 
Demon Surfer, oddly enough, the custodian is VERY interested in my little aquarium and he has wanted a large one for himself for months now. He is the one who fed my fish each day (including all the bettas in their jars) for two weeks over the Christmas/New Year's break.

I've been waiting for him to come in today just to ask and see if perhaps they DID die and float and he just kindly took them out. But I'm sure he wouldn't just take them.

Maybe if they were really fancy fish, someone might be temped, but not a few bucks worth of them. I hope, anyway! Other than the custodian, nobody has a key to my office. I'm the webmaster and have very expensive computer equipment and programs so it's pretty secure...

OrionGirl - that was interesting about the bones/skeleton!!! I didn't know any of that -- thanks for posting it!
 
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