Cardinal Fish Injury from Wavemaker

[mmartins02]

Last night I came home and found my small Banggai Cardinalfish stuck to the back of my wavemaker. No fins or anything got sucked in but the fish is weirdly shaped like the letter ‘s’ now. It is still alive but cannot swim properly. Now it is just laying on the sand. I feel awful and don’t know what to do since I’ve never had an incident like this happen. Can it heal from an injury like this? or should I euthanize it? In the photo you can see how the fish is kind of stuck in this curved position. :(

The tank is a 40 gallon breeder, the pair of cardinals usually stayed on the opposite end of the tank away from any flow.

 

[JustJordan]

Sorry this happened to you and your reef. Most often when a fish gets stuck to a wavemaker there is an underlying issue already with the fish. Most often they are already ill and too weak to swim away. (Parameters, new to tank stress, aggression, lack of food/finicky eater etc.)

I've not had the best of luck with cardinals, due to aggression, I've tried twice to keep a group of 3-5 of them and they would steadily fight until there was just one. Others have had great success with them.

There is always a chance it can recover, but, unlikely.

 

[mmartins02]

Sorry this happened to you and your reef. Most often when a fish gets stuck to a wavemaker there is an underlying issue already with the fish. Most often they are already ill and too weak to swim away. (Parameters, new to tank stress, aggression, lack of food/finicky eater etc.)

I've not had the best of luck with cardinals, due to aggression, I've tried twice to keep a group of 3-5 of them and they would steadily fight until there was just one. Others have had great success with them.

There is always a chance it can recover, but, unlikely.

Unfortunately it ended up passing, probably for the best as I couldn’t imagine it healing fully. I’ll see how the single cardinal does in the tank, the pair never showed any aggression towards each other and I felt like I won the lottery with them.