Diagonal stripe goby disappeared

About five days ago I bought a goby at one of my local lfs. I acclimated him for about 45 minute by dripping water. When I put him in the tank, he saw up close to the rocks and just say there until the lights went off. I figured that he was probably just getting used to it and would start acting normally when he did. The next morning, however, I looked all over the tank and I couldn't find him anywhere. I know that they dig burrows and hide in them, so I didn't worry about it for a couple days.

Now it has been five days and I haven't seen him at all. I looked all over the tank for a burrow, but didn't see any openings in the sand. I thought maybe he had died in there somewhere so I did a water test and all of my tank parameters are fine, no ammonia spike.

I wasn't sure if I would have even noticed anything though because he's in a 125 gallon that has about 85 pounds of live rock. With something that small I don't know that I'd even get much of a spike.

Should I be concerned or is it possible for him to be hiding for this long?

I checked my overflow, but he wasn't in the overflow box in the tank or the u tube or the back box. I keep a sponge in the back box, so there's no way he could have gotten past that point and into my sump.

 

He/She might still be hiding.

 

I had a twin-spot goby for a couple months that one day just disappeared, never found a body or any signs of where he went and never had any noticable ammonia spike either. We assumed he died and just got devoured by the other fish.

Five days of hiding seems like a long time, but in a 125 gallon tank I'm sure there are a lot of hiding spots.

 

That's a tiny fish in a comparatively huge tank. I have a yashi goby in a 75 that I get to see once or twice a month if I'm lucky.

Get your goby a Randalli Shrimp. They will pair up when they find one another and then you will at least know where to watch when you see the mounds of sand outside the den.

 

Thanks for the replies. Mystery is actually solved now. I spoke to lfs and they told me that gobies can jump out of the tank so I looked again and I found him dead on the floor way back behind my tank where I hadn't noticed him before.

 

Aww that sucks

Here's an easy problem solver. http://www.3reef.com/forums/i-made/clear-mesh-jump-stopper-121802.html

FWIW if you go with a mesh top it's my opinion that 1/4" is the only size that should be used. I volunteer at a local educational aquarium and we have 1/2" mesh on all the tanks with jumpers. Every once in a while we'll find a larger fish that wasn't quite large enough to be stopped by the mesh but had to much girth to go through and has hung up by a gill plate or a pectoral fin. They hang there and die anyway defeating the purpose.

 

Sorry to hear about your loss.

 

thanks. i guess i'll be waiting to get another goby until I have some sort of cover over my tank.