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drewcho

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My twin spotted goby died this morning. I actually saw it at the moment of death. Unbelievable! It was a terrible sight.

I am still trying to figure out what went wrong. I tested the water immediately after I removed him and all the readings were normal. pH=8.2 temp=81 Ammonia=0 Nitrite=0 Salinity=1.025 etc..

He was fairly new. (2 weeks in my tank) Since he was a sand sifter, I was watching him closely to see if he was eating well. I noticed he started sifting away about an hour after I introduced him to my tank. I thought all was well. I kept an eye on him every day and even dropped some frozen brine shrimp on the bottom to make sure that he got some of it when he sifted the sand.

This morning, I saw that his dorsal fins were all folded up and that he was "panting" His gills were pumping furiously. I knew somehting was wrong. Unfortunately, I watched him for the next 5 minutes and saw him die in those 5 minutes. He couldn't swim anymore and tilted from side to side, then he did the backstroke and then opened his mouth as wide as it could open then went into convulsions. I was shocked. I watched him for another 10 minutes before I netted him and took him out.

Did he starve to death? It's about the only thing that I can think of.

I forgot to mention that he is the only fish in my pico reef aquarium (5 gallons). I don't think it was the water, because I watched it like a hawk. I did read that sand sifters sometimes starve to death if they don't sift enough or if the live sand is not rich enough. Maybe that was it. Any ideas?

Poor thing....
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ZeroMaintenance

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Maybe he was stressed from shipping. I also read that some fish are caught using cyanide and this may have effects long after they are sold. I was probably not your fault if your water is good and nothing else was stressing him like other fish.
 

Rich-n-poor

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how long has this tank been up? is the sand bed active ? did you start with live sand or agronite ? have you seen any cephalopodes for him to eat ? gobies are best for est beds teaming with life. many gobies will only eat live food from your bed and the brine shrimp will be a waste of time.
 

jmeader

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What you have described is not death by starvation. The furious breathing would indicate that it was having trouble breathing. That would most likely be caused by toxic level poison such as ammonia or copper. Otherwise it could have been an infestion of parasites attacking its gills.
 

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