The lost cat thread reminded me to ask this question. My son just got a new aquarium and we stocked it with 6 fish. We were told to watch the fish carefully for the first few days because that is when any water problems would happen. I had trouble with the heater thermostat and the water temperature was fluctuating wildly. At one time the temp was quite warm. At this time, we noticed that one of the fish had red around its mouth, maybe from the high temp. This was in the morning. After we returned home in the afternoon, that fish had disappeared. We searched everywhere for a body but found none. Did the other fish eat the dead one? I find this hard to believe. They have such tiny mouths. There were no remains, nothing, not a bone. They had about 8 hours to do their business. Is this possible?
I’m not sure what you’re asking. Can a goldfish die and be completely consumed by his other goldfish tankmates in eight hours? I’m doubtful. Do you only have goldfish, or are there other types?
Otherwise, I’d suspect the pet raccoon. What, you don’t have a pet raccoon? How about the cat? No cat? Dog?
Time to get out the thumbscrews and start interrogating the family. Someone’s not talking.
You don’t need a heater with goldfish at all. They like cold water. If what you have is tropical fish (mollies? platys?) then yes, you need a heater.
I have had fish disappear like this. It’s a mystery. I have two cats, but I also have a covered aquarium. They could probably open it but I sincerely doubt that they would ever think to close it.
For instance, we had baby mollies. We had a hard time counting them, but took a picture of the aquarium and counted and there were at least 17 (possibly more, if some were hiding when the photo was shot). Now a few of them did expire from time to time and we duly noted this in the aquarium log and removed the bodies. But this only happened four times, and we now have only 7 fish. I clean the gravel well enough to know that there are no bodies buried there. I have no clue what happened to these fish.
My WAG would be that the fish jumped out of the tank. If the filter is outside of the tank, and the tank is covered well, that is the most likely route of escape. Otherwise, it is one of the common mysteries of the aquarium world. How big is the tank? If it’s under 50gal, six is a lot of fish for starting an aquarium. Look again carefully for the fish and for the next few days pay careful attention to the smell of the water. If you get any hint of putrification, I’d dump all the water and start all over again after cleaning the tank and all the sand. Look also in the filter. Don’t toss out the filter media, but dig through it. The filter is where most of the bacteria will be living until the tank gets well established so tossing oiut the media at this point will set you back.
It’s been several days now, no smell. The water looks good. This is a 20 gal tank and the rule, we were told is 1 inch to the gallon. Right now we are at less than 10 inches of fish in the tank. The tank is covered and there is no way for the cat to get at the fish. I will look behind the cabinet.
As I stated, the fish did not look healthy when we left that morning. My guess was that it died.
BTW, I said they were goldfish but they are not. They are tropical fish.
Tropical fish–especially the smaller species–can very easily die and have the tiny floating dead body drift around and ultimately fetch up wedged behind the filter intake tube or the heater, where you don’t notice it, but the other fish, who are right on the scene and who have nothing better to do than cruise around looking for things to eat, do notice it, and immediately take care of body disposal. End result: a fish that mysteriously “vanishes”. And yeah, small tropical fish in a heated tank can finish off the remains of one of their dead compadres in 8 hours, no sweat. And it doesn’t take much nibbling for them to disarticulate the skeleton, whose thread-like components either drop to the bottom of the tank to join the general detritus, or are sucked into the filter. Either way, you never see a fishy skeleton lying on the bottom of the tank like those ceramic aquarium decorations. All you know is that a fish disappeared.
What kind of fish are they?
Signed,
15 YEARS OF FISHKEEPING AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT
I should add that especially in an overheated tank, simple bacterial decomposition of the remains is a big factor. The warmer the water, the faster the bacteria will rot any carcasses, especially of the smaller species.
It’s possible. I once brought a pizza home for lunch. The phone rang, so I sat the box on the counter. I returned a few minutes later and opened the box to discover it empty. (Imagine this scene, if you will-- me staring down into the box insisting to myself that there really was once a pizza in it. Grease spots and residual heat had assured me of it. But no pie lay within.)
I quickly discovered the culprit. My dog had pizza sauce on her face, belying her innocent eyes and wagging tail. Yep. She had eaten the pizza and closed the box to hide her dastardly crime. (More realistically, I bet gravity was what closed the box. Likewise, the weight of the flap on top of your tank probably caused it to swing shut after the cat left.)
I’d concur with this - they might only have little mouths, but they eat each other damn quick upon death. Some fish even start eating at the dying, which is particularly gruesome (and makes the ‘relaxing’ nature of having fish questionable at best!). Add to that the point that fish bodies disintegrate quickly, and as was noted the detritus disappears in the gravel in no time.
That “eating at the dying” thing is extremely distressing and why tropical fish are no kind of pet for little kids. Nature is really red in tooth and fin.
I think the likeliest scenario is that the fish managed to jump and the cat did the rest.