Help Dying Copperband

[Ricox]

I have had my copperband for a few months now and it has been happily eating. Just in terms of price and for my copperband I have been feeding live mussels everyday. More recently I have noticed my Midas Blenny chasing it around which I believe has caused a large amount of stress. I have been concerned about it but today coming home I have found it lying down on the sand and it is not accepting food. Only sometimes getting up to swim. What should I do? I have tried many times to catch the Midas Blenny without success due to it hiding in the middle of my rockwork which is epoxied together. did not accept the fish trap I made either. But even if I do catch it I have no guarantee my copperband will improve. Also used to happily eat mussels and frozen and was fat and happy. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Duane family]

Hi, did you notice perhaps that it stopped eating some time back or has it always still eaten well until now ?
Most, but not all copperbands are very sensitive to other fish behavior.

Sadly at this time based on what you have mentioned I can't see that there is much you can do. One thing about the copperband is that when they are not healthy they go downhill fairly slowly over time and not suddenly. It could be that you missed this until now. All that I can suggest is reducing the flow in the tank as when they are not healthy they battle to deal with current flow. Or if you can catch him then a observation tank with low salinity water would be a good first move, the lower salinity water makes it easier for the fish in terms of respiration and use of energy you can acclimatize it to water around 1013 and you don't need to do this over more than 30min. The only thing this will do is buy you time to try and understand what may be wrong with the fish.

 

[-Lo]

Hi, did you notice perhaps that it stopped eating some time back or has it always still eaten well until now ?
Most, but not all copperbands are very sensitive to other fish behavior.

Sadly at this time based on what you have mentioned I can't see that there is much you can do. One thing about the copperband is that when they are not healthy they go downhill fairly slowly over time and not suddenly. It could be that you missed this until now. All that I can suggest is reducing the flow in the tank as when they are not healthy they battle to deal with current flow. Or if you can catch him then a observation tank with low salinity water would be a good first move, the lower salinity water makes it easier for the fish in terms of respiration and use of energy you can acclimatize it to water around 1013 and you don't need to do this over more than 30min. The only thing this will do is buy you time to try and understand what may be wrong with the fish.

Moving a Copper Band initites a hunger strike. Do a partial water change and restore a little redox potential to the chemistry.