Mortality from anything OTHER than carpet surfing?

[piscivorous]

I just registered to this forum so I could have access to this particular group. Pretty impressive to see a whole group devoted to BSJF. I have a 55 that I am setting up and waiting on my cycle to finish. I am researching livestock for my tank. I will have a pair of true percula clowns, likely also have a royal gramma. A couple of other things are still up in the air (purple firefish, yellow clown goby, etc). The blue spot jawfish has really caught my eye but in doing a lot of reading the high mortality rate also scares me. But I keep coming back to it because it is so cool looking and so interesting to watch. It would seem the high mortality rate comes from the number of folks who did not research the fish's characteristic behavior of attempting to carpet surf (I don't understand how a person lays out $100 on a fish and doesn't do some background research on it first). Or if they did know about it, they did not take the necessary precautions to prevent it.
So I am wondering this....if you can prevent them from jumping out of the tank, how difficult are they to keep alive. Are there OTHER common issues with these guys that contribute to the high mortality rate, or is it mainly just the carpet that kills them?

 

[cindyp]

I never had those fish but I can tell you there is a guy on here called acroholic that sells this mesh that is awesome to keep the jumppers in the tank. I have several firefish and torpedo gobys and they are wild about carpet surfing thankfully I dont need to worry anymore here's a pic of the screens we made. I have my mh 3 1/2 inches above this mesh and it doesn't melt

 

[lcstorc]

Welcome to RS and the BlueSpot club.
For a long time people were having trouble with a white spot disease, parasite, infection. As far as I know it was never successfully identified but was responsible for numberous deaths.
You will want to be careful to get a blue spot in good health and eating. Unless from a very reputable source I would not order one on the internet but rather get one from your LFS that you can watch eat preferrably over a couple of weeks. The time of higest risk is shortly after adding them to the tank. If the fish is healthy and eating then your biggest problem is carpet surfing. Do not underestimate this fish's desire to see the world outside of the water. I have had them jump through eggcrate and open areas smaller than you would believe they could jump through. They are most jumpy shortly after adding them but you are never safe. I have a frame of netting that sits on top of my tank to keep them in and I have still seen them jump up and hit the net.
These are wonderful fun and intelligent fish but IME the males seem to stay in their burrow a lot of the time. My female spends a lot more time out and about while I rarely see more than the head of my male except at dinner time. Also they are major pigs and will eat large pieces of food if offered. Another thing to take seriously is their digging. Be sure your rocks are very steady preferrably placed on the bottom of the tank before the sand. They will dig extensively and have burrows with several openings that may be closed or open at any given time. Mine seem to keep re-arranging their areas but have pretty much claimed a territory and stay in that general area. Offer them a lot of building material often. If mine run out of rubble they go on a hunger strike. They also use many sizes. A shell from a large Turbo snail is not to large for them.
That is all I can think of right now. You probably already know most of it but those are the lessons I have learned from these marvelous fish.

 

[UnknownFish]

I had one commit suicide by powerhead.