We've Got a Jumper!

Well, it was going to happen eventually. My female McCosker's Wrasse jumped up over the barrier in the back of the tank and landed in the filter area, where there was not enough water for her to survive. I found her last night.

Apart from not have too many fish in my tank, I'm wondering what I could have done to prevent the loss. This the firstsecond death I've had (not a bad track record), and I take these things as a lesson about what I could be doing or not doing to make the process smoother.

I could have improved the protective barrier to make it even less likely that she could wriggle by. As it stands, a small fish has to launch itself with high velocity at the perfect angle just to get back there, so it's dubious how much more protection I could provide. The older versions of the Biocube 29 had no raised wall above the false back/overflow, and that led to many fish deaths. The wall on my version is a few inches above water level and has less than a 1 inch gap between it and the back of the light cover.

Less fish would certainly make for less stress, especially for her. She suffered the brunt of the aggression from my territorial pair of clowns, and less frequently from the male McCosker's Wrasse who chases females as a natural part of his behavior. Less chasing means less jumping. That said, these wrasses are very well-known to be jumpers and my friend who maintains an open-top with a very healthy community plan still loses fish (especially wrasses) on a semi-regular basis.

I'm sad for the loss and regret that I wasn't able to provide a better home for this animal. In the future I will definitely lean towards understocking despite my excitement about new animals. As someone who has kept fish for a long time, I should have known better.

The silver lining here is that there is a bit less pooping now, but I will still have a nutrient issue until I address it by halving my fish load or working on a high rate of nutrient export via macro algae growth in my future above-tank refugium project.