6 line wrasse - From fine to eye fell off in 24 hours

[nbooks]

So...my first sick fish.

- Purchased last Saturday (10/24) from a well known large LFS, very clean tank with multiple other inhabitants all looking healthy.
- Yesterday (10/29) at around 8am I noticed his eye was looking a tad white and swollen.
- started researching and found the possible options of pop eye/eye injury
- by 12pm wife was texting me saying eye was very white and more swollen
- by 3pm wife texted me saying she was pretty sure the eye was gone, and i confirmed she was correct around 5pm when i got home.

so now what? I was rushing to set up an old 20g tank as a QT last night but now im not convinced its necessary (please dont shame me, i don't QT normally...). It's behavior has not changed from normal at any point this week or even now with an eye gone, skimming along the rocks picking for food, eating and hiding in some caves at times. Occasionally bumping into my clowns but they gently nudge it back in the right direction.

Maybe i can have another wrasse now since this one wont be able to see it? LOL

Tank is a 3 month old 40g AIO, params at time fish was added are below. numbers are very stable but I will check again this afternoon:
temp - 78.6
salinity - 34ppm
nitrates - 5
phos - 0.17

other fish:
2x ocellaris
1x firefish
1x bangai cardinal
1x diamond goby

all other inabitants are healthy and acting normal

 

[fishguy242]

hi,lets get some expert help here , @Jay Hemdal #reefsqaud

 

[MugenReef95]

CAN we get a picture please if possible aswell lol?

 

[nbooks]

CAN we get a picture please if possible aswell lol?

Ill try, I finally just got a lens for my phone today. Otherwise all i have are the very blurry ones from yesterday.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Loss of an eye, termed enucleation is not always fatal to fish. What is more rare is the speed at which this happened to your fish. I also can’t account for why it happened - usually it is due to trauma from another fish or possibly gas supersaturation. It is not a primary symptom of any specific disease. Prophylactic treatment with an antibiotic is always a good idea, but that needs to be done in another tank really.
Try to get that pic for us, in case we can see something else going on.
Jay

 

[nbooks]

Its possible i missed something at the LFS, but there were two six lines in tanks next to each other both healthy and looking happy. This particular one i believe was listed as "sustainably harvested" which caused my wife to choose it, but I also don't know how long it was in the store tank prior to purchase.

The size of the eye yesterday morning was immediately noticeable so i dont see how i would have missed it in store...thats what had me leaning towards acute injury...until it fell off!

 

[nbooks]

sorry for dissapearing...rough weekend. On Friday in doing some water testing i found out that i have a failed nitrate kit....

turns out my nitrates were way higher than the kit i just tossed was telling me so i was scrambling to do a 50% water change even though everything in the tank seemed fine.

Wrasse is still fine, will attach the medicore pic i managed to get. Very hard fish to capture, you can just barely see the difference side to side that the bulge of an eye is missing. Im hesitant to qurantine/treat given lack of symptoms currently (and the risk that my qt is just newly cycled).

 

[vetteguy53081]

Photo very dark. Can’t see fish

 

[nbooks]

Any better?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Yep - given the fish and its behavior, I wouldn’t treat it....

Jay

 

[nbooks]

appreciate the insights Jay. Last night it finally started aggressively feeding on mysis, definitely going to leave it alone for now. Will update if anything changes.