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Went away for the long weekend and since my CBB had just kicked it after 2 healthy years I felt I could get away with just using an autofeeder for pellets for my remaining fish.

No clue how it happened but my autofeeder fell into my tank while I was away dumping a tonne of pellets and letting an electrical current run rampant through my tank.

Lost my yellow assessor, 2 clams and ALL of my sps.
Thought it was a lot worse at first but it turned out after 200% water changes since then that all of my other fish were just hiding and my zoas were all closed up.

Things are perking up, but what a disaster...
to have smelled it, one would think that it was a total wipe out.

Damn dude sorry to read this. How was it fastened?

Sorry for ur losses:cry: sounds like this is happening alot currently??

Sorry to here this.

Ugh.

Can you let us know which feeder and how it was mounted ? Maybe your experience can help someone else avoid a similar situation.

It is shocking, isn't it! :mrgreen:

Sad to hear this. :sad: First my fan and now your auto-feeder.
Sounds like yours was a little worse than mine though. I never lost any fish, just a few corals.

ugh...
And my yellow assessor was by far my most interactive fish...
the tank seems to dull now comparatively speaking.


It was the Rena auto feeder and it was attached by 3m velcro tape to my eurobace.

I still can't figure out how it became detached from the velcro...
If anything, I was worried about the glue on the velcro tape coming off but the velcro some became actually detached....?

Also, I have now installed a grounding probe...lol


Now it's frag shopping time I suppose...

Also going to keep an eye out for a good deal on another yellow assessor...maybe try and get two or three this time around and introduce them all simultaneously

just some input
I was thinking about this when I was setting up my tank. I read some stories about autofeeders falling into tanks a few times. So one of the things that really intrigued me about using a mesh top was that I could feed through it. My pellets go right through the mesh and it has no chance of falling in if it ever fell. I also place the autofeeder above the light rack so i dont have to mess with it when Im opening the lid. you also cannot even tell its there unless you look for it or if you are really tall.

btw why you like the yellow assessor so much?

Jeez another crappy thread...sorry to hear about your losses! It is that time of year though...people move, people go on vacation, people are distracted away from the tank.

On a sidenote, I see you had a Yellow and a Blue Assessor together? How did they get on together? Were they added at the same time or different times? Theoretically they shouldn't get along, but I currently have a Blue and would love to add a Yellow. :D

:sad: Wow! So sorry to read this...glad some fish survived though.

sorry about your tank. So much work goes into this hobby and to come home to that would be horrible.

I've always read that assessors are pretty non aggressive...?
Though I tend to only take first hand acccounts from aquarists into consideration of in tank aggression so maybe popular research opines differently.

I can attest to both my blue and my yellow never showing any aggression to each oother or any of the other conspecific basslets in my tank, so maybe I'm just lucky.
The yellow (about half the size of the blue) was added about a year before the blue one so strictly speaking from my experience you should have no issues at all adding a second assessor.

I guess theoretically, my 4 grammas shouldn't get along either though...

The blue is much more cryptic while the yellow is very interactive and swims upside down in the open water which (Milad) is why I liked it so much.

Sorry for your losses, that must of sucked to come home to :sad:

The tank is in the basement and the minute I walked through the door upsairs I could smell trouble...

When I looked into the tank, there was like a half inch of film algae and the water was so cloudy you couldn't see more than a half a foot through it.

I thought it would be a total wipe out, plus it took me three days to make 200gallons of fresh sw so I had really almost given up on everything by the time I cleared away the film algae just before the third water change...

I couldn't believe it when everyone was still kicking other than the yellow assessor, all sps, 2 clams and most lps plus all of my zoas and shrooms looking like they were hung over.

I almost feel lucky after thinking it was a total loss.

Sorry about your loss.
Re: the feeder, it is very intriguing how it can come off the velcro. I was going to mount one just like that (except it will be a battery operated eheim) to help with some feeding chores. Do you have a cat? Maybe smelling the food and rubbed it right off the velcro??
And Milad, pls enlighten me, wouldn't the mesh interfere/ lessen the amount of light going into your tank? Just wondering because I got all these ugly glass tops on mine due to a few "jumpers", and it would be great to figure out another way to corral them in,m so to speak.

3 cats...lol
but a canopy that would not allow any feline access to the feeder.

It would've actuallybeen very difficult for anything other than an arm or something to get into the back of the tank where the feeder was....

And there was no one home to mess around with your stuff, house/cat sitters??

Cool, thanks goby! My Blue is also quite cryptic, and if I could catch it I would put it in my Zoa nano so I would see it more often, plus the strong blue lighting in there would make it look awesome. Assessors aren't very widely kept, so I think there is a lack of precise information. Since they are a basslet you would assume they theoretically shouldn't get along, but there always exceptions. You aren't the first person I have heard of keeping a Blue and a Yellow together, and I think Leah (on these forums) also keeps them together. I have also heard of people keeping harems of Blues long-term with no troubles. Time to go buy a Yellow I should say. :D

check out the link on my sig. There is a picture of the mesh. Its 1/4 clear mesh. I dont think it blocks much light but it def could be. I cant notice a difference.

I agree...
and so much of the information out there is often outdated and comes from a pre live rock era...

A Harem of either color (or both) would make an intense display.
Thought I must admit to immense satisfaction in the gramma group I have established....

Hopefully one day, one of us will get lucky and wind up with a green assessor...lol:mrgreen:

Working on it. :lol: :wink:

A tennant, but he would never let anything happen to my tank...lol
He knows it would spell certain eviction.


I am chalking it up to human error (mine) or fluke bad luck at this point.