Mike
Sun, 6th Jun 2010, 10:17 AM
We had another viscious attack sometime Friday night or Saturday morning. This time to Kristy's female mandarin that we have had for close to three years. Almost all of her fins are gone- top fin, tail, and side fins. We moved her to the small tank, but as you can imagine she is not doing too well.
So far this has happened to another smaller male mandarin (over two years ago) and to a lantern basslet. The lantern was jumped twice, once (~9 months ago) left him with part of his tail and most of one fin missing, then a second (myabe 3 months ago) more of his tail and other fin were gone. He not too long after the second attack dissapeared for good with no trace. All the vi tims are small, slow fish that sleep on the sandbed.
These attacks have happened over a fairly long period of time. The problem is with the new female mandarin's attack, we no longer have some of the popular suspects from the previous attacks. We used to have a coral banded shrimp who is gone and we had a big pistol shrimp, who I am 95% sure is now gone (no pops and gone from visible tunnels underneath).
So left in our tank as suspects are 2 good sized red serpent/brittle starfish we were told were fish safe. We did not have them in the tank when the male mandarin was attacked.
We do have a few small, with one getting to be medium hermit crabs. I don't see how they could hold a fish down to trim off all the fins.
We do not think we have any fish who might be suspect- 4 tangs, bunch of anthias, a butterfly, couple of reef safe wrasses, couple of dwarf angels. Among the more aggressive biters in the tank are the maroon clown pair, flame tail blenny, 3+ year old damsel and 3+ year old bi-color blenny.
Sorry for the long rambling post- any thoughts on possible cuprit?
So far this has happened to another smaller male mandarin (over two years ago) and to a lantern basslet. The lantern was jumped twice, once (~9 months ago) left him with part of his tail and most of one fin missing, then a second (myabe 3 months ago) more of his tail and other fin were gone. He not too long after the second attack dissapeared for good with no trace. All the vi tims are small, slow fish that sleep on the sandbed.
These attacks have happened over a fairly long period of time. The problem is with the new female mandarin's attack, we no longer have some of the popular suspects from the previous attacks. We used to have a coral banded shrimp who is gone and we had a big pistol shrimp, who I am 95% sure is now gone (no pops and gone from visible tunnels underneath).
So left in our tank as suspects are 2 good sized red serpent/brittle starfish we were told were fish safe. We did not have them in the tank when the male mandarin was attacked.
We do have a few small, with one getting to be medium hermit crabs. I don't see how they could hold a fish down to trim off all the fins.
We do not think we have any fish who might be suspect- 4 tangs, bunch of anthias, a butterfly, couple of reef safe wrasses, couple of dwarf angels. Among the more aggressive biters in the tank are the maroon clown pair, flame tail blenny, 3+ year old damsel and 3+ year old bi-color blenny.
Sorry for the long rambling post- any thoughts on possible cuprit?