He's alive, thought I lost him! (Again)

[Fish Brain]

I have a feather duster in one of my pieces of live rock that I've had for 3 years. He's about one inch across and I was worried he was gone since I haven't seen it in two weeks . I was just feeding the biocube and noticed he is back out. He is my oldest surviving tank inhabitant, and lived through the power outage of Feb. 2010 that took out half my coral.

This is not the first time it has played the disappearing game and have the feeling it won't be the last. The first time he was missing, I actually found his crown and thought it was dead. I found out after he came back a few weeks later they can shed their crown if they are stressed. I had just rearranged the rocks in the tank and found the crown the next day. I'm not sure what caused this disappearance but he is back and I'm glad to see him again!

 

[shipwrecked]

Lol glad you found it again,amazing how things in our tanks dissapear and re appear some time later.

 

[NikkiT]

Glad to hear that he is fine

 

[TanksNStuff]

Great story, glad you found him!

I have a similar story, but with a fish. I went away back in April (diving trip in Cozumel) and had my brother-in-law watch/feed my tank while we were gone.

When we returned, our neon dottyback was missing. My bro-in-law said he hadn't seen him eat the last couple days, but he didn't want to call and ruin our vacation. He had no clue what happened to him though. He's always been kind of timid fish, so we thought he was just hiding, but after a few days we assumed he was dead. No signs of him anywhere either, not on the floor, nothing.

So, 2 weeks go by and I start doing my bi-monthly pruning of my chaeto in my sump. I start grabbing the huge clump out to trim it, and there he is! I couldn't believe it. He managed to jump over the overflow wall, swim through the drain pipe, hop out of the filter sock, then jump over the sump baffle to end up hiding in the chaeto. I have no idea how he survived without being fed for 2+ weeks. I guess he could have eaten some of the pods in the chaeto, but I never see him eating them in the display tank.

It's truly a great feeling to find a critter after it being missing for a while, so I know how you feel Brian.