$75 1" Clownfish... DEAD!

[Reefer4ever]

So, along with all of this good news, I bring you bad news. I bought these 2 $75 1" black-ice/ smore(similar to ORA's semi-snowflake clownfish except these ones get black inbetween the white stripes) from a guy down in Florida at the age of 5 months. Two very beautiful fish. Well, this morning, I went to look at the little beauties and I only see one... then I see the other. I found his head poking out of the powerhead! It was the smaller of the two, the dead one, the last time I measured it, was 1.0" and the living one was 1.3". This means, since the age of the fish is now 11 months, that because these were the only two fish for a long while, that I have a female left. My plans were to breed them eventually, but the offspring dominately have traits from the male, rather than the female, and the male had stronger visual traits. This also means, because I have a 1.3" female, I have to find a clown smaller than 0.9", which shouldn't be too easy, unless you guys could point me to someone who has pico size black clownfish or true percula clownfish.

So either the clownfish died from the cold or was sleeping on the powerhead, which he does about every two-three days, and got sucked in. His normal sleeping spot was behind the pot. The temperature this morning read 70.2 degrees F. During the day the tank reads 77-78 and at night, it reads 73-75. Could these few degrees cause this to happen? Maybe he died from the cold and then got sucked into the powerhead? What do you guys think happened, because I am not sure. Thanks.

Here are pics of the dead male and I pic of the sad, lonely depressed female.( I can tell because she is hovering in one spot, while she is usually all over the place.)
Also excuse the terrible pictures. The female still moves very jerky, like a copepod.

http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab37/reefer4ever/Clownfish002.jpg

http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab37/reefer4ever/Clownfish003.jpg


I hate this! AHHHHHHH! I took too long and it logged me out, so i had to log back in and type this all over, but faster!

[hobogato]

sorry dylan, that realy bites!

[Europhyllia]

That's terrible. Sorry.
I am worried about the other one if she shows signs of unusual behavior.

[Kristy]

Sorry you lost a very special fish. :( You may never know the cause for sure, but I suspect the stress of the temp swing. Especially if he often hung out around the powerhead, which would indicate that when healthy he had no problem keeping himself from being sucked into it. (Side note: man, how do reefers with real winter weather deal with this? They must all have super fancy heaters plugged into Reefkeepers to monitor and alert them!)

I can offer you some help from the other frustration you mentioned. We get logged off all the time at our house, especially since we are a two-user household so we rarely use the "Remember Me" option on the log-in box, which would keep you from being logged off so often. Next time you get logged off for taking too long to write a post, scroll DOWN the page to the login box below the message (rather than scrolling UP the page to log in where you usually would). If you log in there, it remembers your message and sends it as normal. Hope that helps.

[wolff809]

Very sorry to hear that. My tank goes through a similar temp change and my clowns seem to be fine but I just lost a 12 line and I think that's what did it. But you can never be to sure in this hobby.