missing fish?!?!

[miach]

i bought 3 blue green chromis got them on wednesday. when to work and they were all there when i came back. thursday after i came back from work i was missing one. looked everywhere on the floor, in the tank. sure enough in the morning no fish. now today come home after work and i missing another fish. no trace of them anywhere!!! i am confused as hell. the only other critters i have in my tank are 2 maroon clowns (which they get along great. ive watched the for a while around 3 to four hours at a time and never once did the maroons attack), a hermit crab pretty small, an emerald crap, 4 corals (very small), plants, small snails, small hitchhiker star fish, copepods and amphipods. does anybody have any idea. i mean no trace of them!? i do have 2 cats that hate water and a small dog who has no chance of sticking her head in. my only explanation is they jumped out and my cats at them

[Brhino]

Are you absolutely positive they're not hiding somewhere in rocks or decorations? A lot of times people think they're missing a fish until they tear the tank apart and find out it was hiding under or behind something.

[miach]

ive looked for about an hour and my set up goes right to the other side of the tank. thats why i gave it till the next day after an hour and nothing normally they would be swimming around together or just swimming around period they are very active fish.

[labnjab]

I've had fish go missing for 6 + months at a time and later show up as if they were never gone. If you see no carcass I would give it a few months before I gave up on it

[miach]

no way thats crazy!! well thanks for the encouragement!! for real!! i mean i didnt pay much for the fish (i got a hell of a deal 3 chromis for $8.50 they were on sale) but i still have one (and hes in tip top shape even by himself now), and no carcasses yet. hopefully they show up but i definitely know now that my clowns(gold stripe maroon) will not act too aggressive towards other fish, they swam together even in the clowns territory and no aggressiveness towards the chromis i was amazed and excited.

[ILuvMyGoldBarb]

First off, please cool it with the language, this is a family site.

Second, I hate to the bearer of bad news, but this tends to happen quite frequently with these fish. When I first started my 125gal reef I started with 6 Chromis, and within just 2-3 months, they were all gone, and there were no bodies ever found. If they are young Chromis they need large amounts of food. Believe itor not, those little things can eat a lot, and they need a lot to survive. Also, they will develop a pecking order, and the largest will likely end up being your sole survivor for a while. Most of the time, when they end up dead the body will end up somewhere in the rock work and will be quickly "cleaned up" by the cleanup crew. It would amaze you just how quickly a few snails, crabs, and stars can clean up a small carcass.

As for the aggression of the clowns, you can't tell a thing by just a week or 2. They will tolerate them for a while, but I can promise you, they will get aggressive, it is in their nature. Those fish may even get along with others for 6 months or more without issues, then all of a sudden one day they will turn on them. As I've mentioned before, my friend in my local reef club had one living in a 125 with a number of other fish, and they lived peacefully for months, then one day the Maroon decided she wanted the tank to herself and nothing in the tank survived her.

[bmajestic]

Chromis for some reason like to just die out of no where for appereantly no reason. and they are not a fish to typicaly hide in the rock they like to school and swim in the upper water column.

[kaybee]

...It would amaze you just how quickly a few snails, crabs, and stars can clean up a small carcass...

Agreed. The above denizens, combined with a multitude of other hitch-hiking scavengers such as bristleworms and the like, can make a small deceased fish disappear without much of a trace in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Hopefully the chromis will show up alive and well.

[miach]

thanks everybody i appreciate the input and i will hold the language