# Only *I* could lose a fish !!



## HOWsMom (Jan 3, 2012)

Last night, my daughter won a pair of platies at the DRAS meeting.

Definitely 2 in the bag. 

Got home.

Still 2 in the bag.

Into the QT tank.

Now 0 in the bag and 2 in the tank.

Lights off and off to bed.

This morning go to check on them.

1 in the tank ?!?

What's this ?

Okay - must be hiding.

Check repeatedly through the day, even move decor around a bit.

Definitely only 1 in the tank.

Double check the bag - no, 0 in the bag.

Hmm ??

None on the dresser or floor.

And yet only 1 in the tank.

There are no other fish, just a few snails in the QT tank.

Where did our platy go ??

Yes - only *I* can completely LOSE a fish !!

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## Neon (Jan 29, 2014)

Do you have a cat?


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## HOWsMom (Jan 3, 2012)

Yes. But she's pretty much NEVER in my bedroom, which is where the QT tank is.

I think I would have heard her getting up on the dresser and such overnight (she's old and NOT graceful!)

Not that that isn't possible of course ! She watches the main tank a lot though I haven't ever seen her put a paw in.

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## Bullet (Apr 19, 2014)

Anything in the tank that might have eaten it?! 
I lost neons to a catfish a while ago but I couldn't figure it out because the catfish wasn't very big but had a BIG mouth and big appetite!


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## HOWsMom (Jan 3, 2012)

Bullet said:


> Anything in the tank that might have eaten it?!
> I lost neons to a catfish a while ago but I couldn't figure it out because the catfish wasn't very big but had a BIG mouth and big appetite!


A few snails, and the two platys I put in last night is all.

Now - one IS an assassin snail, but I doubt it would finish off a platy in just a few hours, would it ? And leave NOTHING behind ?

I just pulled the dresser out a bit - it is NOT behind it.

Just GONE !!

It's totally weird!


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## clubsoda (Oct 10, 2009)

Is there a lid on the tank? If not it may have jump it'll turned up somewhere dried in the corner


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## Bullet (Apr 19, 2014)

How about stuck up in the lights over your tank ?
Maybe he/she jumped up and got stuck


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## aniroc (Aug 23, 2012)

This is soooo weird!
The other day, I am reading (on another forum) two different threads about people who can't find their fish. Totally gone. And I'm smiling wondering why they post the question on the forum as if someone else can find them. 
I woke up this morning and went to my betta tank to feed him. Guess what?
No fish. No where. Could not jump (a have a screen). It's not dead. I removed everything from that tank: heater, wood, plants. I drained the water and stir the substrate. Nope. Cannot believe this is happening to me, considering the threads I was reading the day before.
And now, yet another one.


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## HOWsMom (Jan 3, 2012)

It's the crop circles of the fish - keeping world. !

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## aniroc (Aug 23, 2012)

No kidding..
Everybody should sleep with their fish in the bed tonight....


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## BettaBubbles (Jan 20, 2014)

This was happening with my otos in my larger tank! I have 3 of them, one was going spastic a few days, they usually hang out on the glass or my moss tree. But one day... All gone. For a whole week. Turns out two were hiding near a rock. The last one... Goodness knows what happened. Possibly have died and the shrimp got to it behind the rock.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

Well, I have, on occasion, found a dessicated corpse quite a long way from the tank it came from. I can only guess that after it jumped, it flip flopped away some distance before dying, poor thing. Found one under the couch, though I suspect feline intervention in that case.

That said, when I took down the 25 G tank earlier this year and put the few remaining fish from it into the 29, which I also had to empty out, [so it could be moved], I found at least more 3 fish in it after I was certain it was fish free. They were in less than an inch of water and one was more or less buried in the substrate. I found them while I was scooping out the substrate, quite literally scooped up the fish with some substrate and felt the fish wriggle in my hand. The water by then was pretty dirty with stirred up crud from the substrate so the fish were quite invisible to the eye.

I also found a bamboo shrimp once that had managed to walk at least ten feet away from its tank before it got too dry to keep going. Why my cats didn't eat it I don't know. If they had I'd have never known what happened to it. I had a dark brown carpet, it was very well camouflaged on that. In fact, I thought it was a hairball until I picked it up. How the poor thing managed to walk that far after falling first out of the 29 G tank to the stand shelf and then another 3.5 feet to the hardwood floor, if not the whole distance in one fall, I will never know.

Once a fish dries up, it can be remarkably difficult to see them. A betta I had, that jumped, took me hours to find when I realized it was not in the tank. Bare tank, nowhere to hide, it had to have jumped out, so I kept looking. It was curled up, bone dry and the drying made the fins virtually vanish, compared to how they appear when the fish swims. The body was perched on the edge of a chair that was quite near what I was using for a tank stand at the time. I guess he landed on the chair and didn't quite fall off it before he expired. sigh. Very depressing finding deceased critters.

Snails and shrimp will certainly consume dead fish, but unless it's really tiny, or there are a ton of scavengers, it won't happen overnight. A danio I had that died, left only a perfect skeleton to be seen after two days and two days after that, nothing was left at all. If a fish is in a hidden spot or corner and you have scavengers, it can appear to have vanished into thin air. I find the little MTS snails are remarkably efficient at scavenging the dead.. so good in fact, even some very large snails I had that died, were entirely eaten before they could affect the water quality.


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## paulof (Dec 4, 2009)

I think fish jumped out and cat got it

Paulo


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## bluegularis (May 12, 2010)

Platies and swordtails are known jumpers. I suspect it some how jumped out, jumped around the floor and is probably stuck and dehydrated somewhere under your furniture. You will find it some time down the road.

Otherwise it could have been the platy of Christmas past or a new type ghostly platy.


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