Early this month, I bought 5 Normal Lampeye (juveniles, and about 1.5-2cm long). Within first night, 1 one them disappeared...then 2 weeks later, another vanished, and a couple of days ago, the 3rd one went missing. No bodies or skeletons were found. Also at no time were the Lampeyes observed to be sick. All appeared active, healthy and eating well.
Which leaves me with a possible serial killer/s in my tank. My tank has 40+ neons, 4 Kennedy tetras, 5 golden tetras, 6 black neons, 7 glowfish zebra danios and about 10 rather large glass shrimps.
I don't think any of the tetras or danios as being the culprit as they even have difficulty eating bits of fish food larger than their tiny eyes.
The glass shrimps however, have grown to average 4-5cm long, and I've observed twice one of the larger specimens making what appears to be a weak unsuccessful lunge at my neons when they were still juves.
Question is... can a 4-5cm long glass shrimp successfully capture and eat a 1.5-2cm long small fish?
If not what could be the possible reasons for my Lampeyes to suddenly disappear?
When the lights are out and the whole room is dark, anything is possible. Poropanchax normani is known to be a jumper, as with almost every other killifish in the hobby. If your tank was not covered to begin with, they will jump if they get spooked, especially by the fast moving danios.
Fish.. Simply Irresistable
Back to Killies... slowly.
Did you check the back of the tank and surrounding areas for a crispie? Other than that, watch for the most voracious eater during feeding time... that bugger gets my vote.Originally Posted by SnottyCat
I'd offer another hypothesis... the normani couldn't adjust to your tank's water parameters, went up the truck quietly and was cleared quickly by the shrimps.
I'm back & keeping 'em fingers wet,
Ronnie Lee
So far didn't find any jumpers. Also not sure about them suddenly up kicking the bucket overnight, as they all seemed active and healthy before MIA.
Fish sometimes kick the bucket suddenly without warning. Likely yours died and was eaten by the shrimp.
Suckerfish no eat poo poo.
Or, you might have a damselfly/dragonfly nymph lurking in the tank somewhere. I found this out the hard way when I had hitchhiking damselfly nymphs that came with my plants...
Fish.. Simply Irresistable
Back to Killies... slowly.
Only one left now....very sad
Still not sure what's killing off the Lampeyes....just hope it wont affect the other fishes.
Just found 3 of my missing (presumed eaten/dead) Lampeyes in my Ehiem classic filter....Only discovered them quite by accident when I cleaned the filter canister yesterday and as I emptied the water from the canister into a pail to recycle the water for watering plants, that I noticed a shadow swimming in the murky dirty water. Turned out they were my lampeyes that had gone missing. Lucky never empty the water into the drain.
Somehow 3 of them got sucked into the filter canister..... prob via the Ehiem surface skimmer that I was using earlier (now not using). The amazing thing is that they were living w/o light or food in the filter canister for 2-3 weeks....the longest one was in there for over a month. So now I have 4 lampeyes....the one that remained in the tank is clearly biggest, and almost twice the size of the one that prob got sucked in over a month ago....in fact size is prob the indicator of how long they were stuck in the canister.
Anyway, it's certainly a miracle that they managed to survive the ordeal w/o food, and quite lucky that I did not throw the water away when cleaning the filter canister. So moral of story is, always pour the waste water into pail and check before throwing it away.
It is a known fact that the Eheim surface skimmer is unsafe for small fishes. I find the ones from Tom brand or others to be much safer. At least now you know what happened to them.
Fish.. Simply Irresistable
Back to Killies... slowly.
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