my condy ate my sailfin?! how? why?
 

i wake up this morning to see all my fish, including my sailfin tang, all gracefully swimming around, then an hour later at noon i go to turn one of my halides on, when i see this dark thing hanging out of my condy anemone.....my first thought he's dying and all his insides are slowly falling out, but considering his color is same as always and tentacles fully extended that though was quickly ruled out, then i though he's eating my snail, as thats exactly what the dark shape looked like, then i saw the snail; on the other side of the tank. Looked around the tank and on the floor to see if he jumped out, nope, surely enough, my glutton of an amemone made a meal of a once spectacular tang! how? why? what would make him suddenly eat a tang? I even fed him a few days ago! :sad:

Sorry to hear, that sucks.

Do you have any pictures of this Condy? How big was the Sailfin?

Anenomes can definately eat fish but Carpet's are usually the culprits.

no don't have any pics of either of them, the sailfin was about 2.5'' long, and the anemone stretched out is about 5''. it's ashamed but what can you do :neutral:

Sometimes even healthy fish can accidentally blunder into anemones if they're not careful - those tentacles are filled with stingers for a reason. I remember a thread on RC where some guy's condy ate his foxface when he was busy transferring stuff between tanks. He even had pictures. Pretty cool but chilling at the same time to see "survival of the fittest" at work before your eyes.

Well, when I first entered into the hobby, I was told condy's ate fish. Has that changed?

My condy ate my dispar anthias last week

Condy's and carpets are notorious fish-eaters.

i have a large condi and ive only had 2 or mabey 3 fish dissapear over a few years but i have no idea if it was the condi, i do know it ate a 10" tall colt coral 2 years ago

o well i already replaced the sailfin with an even larger one, but i always thought that one of my chromis would definitely be eaten, but never a tang, stuns me how it can eat a foxface though, there spines are all full of venom, or for that matter a colt coral?!

quite off topic, but what are the chances of a juvenile sailfin tang & a juvenile naso tang fighting?

Just how big is your tank? Do you bother to check the adult size of the fish you buy or plan to buy? I have a 210g and wouldn't put both a naso & sailfin in there because a naso gets huge and sailfins are not small fish either. Tangs can grow extremely fast, so putting them into a small tank is a not very bright idea. I've had tangs grow literally 1" a month. There are many other tangs & other species that grow to much smaller adult sizes so why not choose other fish you can keep properly. My friend has a sailfin that's at least 7"-8" long and still growing. Nasos are very fast swimming fish that should have a minimum 6' long tank to cruise around in. Even my 4' 120g is too small for me to consider a naso unless I want to upgrade my tank again.

Quote from MarineDepot:

Maximum Size: the Naso lituratus grows up to 18 inches.
Minimum Tank Size: The Naso Tang (Male) prefers a tank of at least 150 gallons with plenty of places to hide & swim.


Anthony

Students on holidays bored and trolling imo.

My sailfin is 7-8" and makes my 180g look small...

wasn't planning on getting a naso tang, don't like them at all, just checking some info from a book, the names were all in scientific.