Injured wrasse

[DrEggroll]

My tank is a 120 gallon up for three years. Everyone has been doing well together. Not much aggression. I noticed my melanarus wrasse laying on its sand doing a water change Tuesday. Today I notice his eye swollen and gouge out by his gill. Been a little more timid today but still eating. Breathing a little heavy and buried himself earlier in the sand than he normally does. Is there anything to do? Or just wait and see.

I have five urchins, several different snails, a peppermint shrimp, an emerald crab and one Halloween hermit crab. Most fish have been together for over a year. New fish is a long nose hawk who hasn’t shown aggression.

Two clowns
Black capped bassler
Long nose hawk
Midas blenny
Watchman goby pistol shrimp
Blue powder tang
Lawnmower blenny

 

[crazyfishmom]

That looks intense. #fishmedic

Hopefully the experts will come by to help. I would try to take him out of the tank and put him in at least observational quarantine and be ready to treat with a broad spectrum antibiotic.

Crossing fingers that he turns around soon.

 

[Sharkbait19]

It’s possible it got hit by a tang, or hit a rock too hard.
Given the location, I’d want to get it into qt to treat with an antibiotic like kanaplex.

 

[DrEggroll]

Here’s an update. I took the lazy approach to let Mother Nature decide. The wrasse didn’t eat for 6 days. Is now eating normally. The wound looks like it’s almost fully healed. Looks like there is some damage or possible infection to its lower jaw. It has not been fully disappearing under the sand at lights out like it used to but seems to be acting normal otherwise

 

[PharmrJohn]

Glad to hear it. Secondary bacterial infection leading to local necrosis (or sepsis at absolute worse) would be the concern. Looks like you did your due diligence and observed for such. Again, glad to hear it.