Possum wrasse. Why are they such a frustratingly difficult fish?!!
I wrote about my journey towards keeping a possum wrasse a while ago.
To get the background story on why I’m so frustrated with this dang fish, please read about it here;
https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/Elusive-fish-being-elusive..327623/
Since the last possum wrasse saga I shared with R2R, there’s been some frustrating times.
I found five more possum wrasse since then. Two of which the sellers refused to ship to anywhere but an airport which is 7 hours away. I don’t drive so that’s not an option.
One seller ordered the fish, but it arrived DOA. On a side note, is selling a fish before ordering it a common thing? It seems a bit dodgy to me.
The fourth seller had one in stock and was prepared to have someone pick it up on my behalf and drive it to my house 5 hours away from the LFS. A family member who lives half an hour from the LFS and was visiting me the very same day refused to pick it up though.
The fifth seller was prepared to ship he fish to my door AND they actually had one in stock. I’ve bought plenty of coral and a few fish from them in the past and have had great success.
I thought the stars had aligned!
The fish shop had a fish for me!
They posted it and two days later it arrived in...some sort of condition. I wouldn’t say it was healthy...but it was alive and looked like it would pull through after the stress of shipping passed.
I acclimated the little guy for a half hour and the entire time I was worrying the ammonia would be through the roof. I didn’t even think to test the bag water at the time. I just wanted the fish out of the bag and in the tank. This dang fish. I just wanted it in the dang tank.
I acclimated it, popped it in the tank in an isolation net with some branching pieces of live rock for shelter so I could observe it for a while.
It was either much worse off then I previously thought, or it was playing dead. Who knows.
This morning when I checked the tank before work, the isolation net was fishless. Obviously the fish survived and was hiding out in the rocks somewhere.
This afternoon when I returned home from work, there was a pure white possum wrasse stuck in between my rocks.
Keeping this fish for...long enough to look at it has been the single most frustrating and stressful thing I’ve ever attempted in this hobby.
I’m ready to give the entire hobby up.
I’ve spend hundreds of dollars on owning this fish and never even seen it in my tank.
This dead wrasse is in a spot where I can’t reach it without pulling my entire tank apart.
If this fish dares to kill my valentini with the ammonia it produces, I will throw my tank off my balcony.
I wrote about my journey towards keeping a possum wrasse a while ago.
To get the background story on why I’m so frustrated with this dang fish, please read about it here;
https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/Elusive-fish-being-elusive..327623/
Since the last possum wrasse saga I shared with R2R, there’s been some frustrating times.
I found five more possum wrasse since then. Two of which the sellers refused to ship to anywhere but an airport which is 7 hours away. I don’t drive so that’s not an option.
One seller ordered the fish, but it arrived DOA. On a side note, is selling a fish before ordering it a common thing? It seems a bit dodgy to me.
The fourth seller had one in stock and was prepared to have someone pick it up on my behalf and drive it to my house 5 hours away from the LFS. A family member who lives half an hour from the LFS and was visiting me the very same day refused to pick it up though.
The fifth seller was prepared to ship he fish to my door AND they actually had one in stock. I’ve bought plenty of coral and a few fish from them in the past and have had great success.
I thought the stars had aligned!
The fish shop had a fish for me!
They posted it and two days later it arrived in...some sort of condition. I wouldn’t say it was healthy...but it was alive and looked like it would pull through after the stress of shipping passed.
I acclimated the little guy for a half hour and the entire time I was worrying the ammonia would be through the roof. I didn’t even think to test the bag water at the time. I just wanted the fish out of the bag and in the tank. This dang fish. I just wanted it in the dang tank.
I acclimated it, popped it in the tank in an isolation net with some branching pieces of live rock for shelter so I could observe it for a while.
It was either much worse off then I previously thought, or it was playing dead. Who knows.
This morning when I checked the tank before work, the isolation net was fishless. Obviously the fish survived and was hiding out in the rocks somewhere.
This afternoon when I returned home from work, there was a pure white possum wrasse stuck in between my rocks.
Keeping this fish for...long enough to look at it has been the single most frustrating and stressful thing I’ve ever attempted in this hobby.
I’m ready to give the entire hobby up.
I’ve spend hundreds of dollars on owning this fish and never even seen it in my tank.
This dead wrasse is in a spot where I can’t reach it without pulling my entire tank apart.
If this fish dares to kill my valentini with the ammonia it produces, I will throw my tank off my balcony.