Fairy Wrasse Confusion

Nelve

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I have a year old 140 gallon aquarium that is stocked with a Kole Tang, two clown fish, lawnmower blenny, fairy wrasse and two pistol shrimp. My fairy wrasse randomly disappeared around 3 weeks ago. I have an extremely tight fitting lid with 0 way it could of jumped so I knew there's no way it jumped out, but I couldn't find it in the tank anywhere. It always hung out near the top or picking at rocks.

I had accepted it's fate until today... I was doing my daily routine of feeding and looking around the tank. There are a ton of holes going underneath the rocks from the pistol shrimp and I see my fairy wrasse barely poking it's head out of tunnel. I thought he was dead and grabbed my long tweezers to pull him out. As soon as I was close to his head he zoomed out of the hole, swam around the tank really fast for about 15 seconds, then disappeared into another hole. This was a few hours ago and he's still MIA.

His colors looked good and he seemed healthy. This doesn't seem like usual behavior though. Is it possible there's some sort of parasite making him act weird or maybe the tang is scaring it? The other fish have been perfectly normal.
 

Peace River

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Interesting question! That sounds like a defensive posture to me, but let's see if we can get some other input...

#reefsquad @Jay Hemdal
 

saltyhog

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That certainly sounds like a wrasse that has been bullied. Which fairy wrasse do you have?

I have had them hide when ill (or when they were near the end of life due to advanced age) but 3 weeks is a long time for that and it sounds like his appearance contradicts that as well.
 

Jay Hemdal

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I have a year old 140 gallon aquarium that is stocked with a Kole Tang, two clown fish, lawnmower blenny, fairy wrasse and two pistol shrimp. My fairy wrasse randomly disappeared around 3 weeks ago. I have an extremely tight fitting lid with 0 way it could of jumped so I knew there's no way it jumped out, but I couldn't find it in the tank anywhere. It always hung out near the top or picking at rocks.

I had accepted it's fate until today... I was doing my daily routine of feeding and looking around the tank. There are a ton of holes going underneath the rocks from the pistol shrimp and I see my fairy wrasse barely poking it's head out of tunnel. I thought he was dead and grabbed my long tweezers to pull him out. As soon as I was close to his head he zoomed out of the hole, swam around the tank really fast for about 15 seconds, then disappeared into another hole. This was a few hours ago and he's still MIA.

His colors looked good and he seemed healthy. This doesn't seem like usual behavior though. Is it possible there's some sort of parasite making him act weird or maybe the tang is scaring it? The other fish have been perfectly normal.
We're seeing a lot of wrasses with an odd neurological syndrome, where they swim in circles, or head up or down, but still try to eat. This does NOT sound like that, which is a good thing since we don't know a cure for that.

I can't tell you what's going on, but I saw another post where they suspected bullying, and that sounds reasonable. The big thing is to try and feed it while its hiding - perhaps squirt some food (not too much!) down one of the burrows?

Jay
 

malacoda

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Sounds exactly like the behavior of my Lubbocki fairy wrasse when it was being bullied (very mildly bullied I may add) by another fish.

What kind of fairy is it?
 

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