I picked up this little girl from a LFS (not that local, though) yesterday afternoon at 3:00 pm. They have a strict 15 day QT process with prazi and copper that he completed successfully, and I that I have seen the setup for, so I trust it. She looked ok at the LFS - not active, but not unwell either...hiding the back of the tank in a corner.
I kept her in a dark, cooler in the air conditioned house where we were visiting family so she wouldn’t get too warm out in the car, and when we got back home at 10:00 pm, the water temp in the bag still felt good to the touch. I floated the bag in my DT (which just completed its 45 day fallow period yesterday. I thought I would make her the first fish in there since I knew she’d be stressed from transport and then planned to move my 2 clowns and bicolor blenny from QT once she looked comfortable in a day or two) for about fifteen minutes and then netted her out and dropped her in (when doing so, she flipped around like crazy in the net, which I took as a good sign). She was breathing the entire time, but once in the tank, she was barely able to swim. She’d flip her fins to get away from the random nassarius snails or hermit crab that came to bother her where she was sitting on the rocks, but the swimming was extremely erratic. After watching her do this with no improvement for a couple hours, I netted her out and transferred her to my QT tank so the inverts wouldn’t bother her. Moved the 3 fish that had been in QT to the DT so she could have the QT tank to himself. This morning, she's still breathing, but still basically can't swim.
Is there anything I can do at this point to help her recover? Or is she likely a goner?
I kept her in a dark, cooler in the air conditioned house where we were visiting family so she wouldn’t get too warm out in the car, and when we got back home at 10:00 pm, the water temp in the bag still felt good to the touch. I floated the bag in my DT (which just completed its 45 day fallow period yesterday. I thought I would make her the first fish in there since I knew she’d be stressed from transport and then planned to move my 2 clowns and bicolor blenny from QT once she looked comfortable in a day or two) for about fifteen minutes and then netted her out and dropped her in (when doing so, she flipped around like crazy in the net, which I took as a good sign). She was breathing the entire time, but once in the tank, she was barely able to swim. She’d flip her fins to get away from the random nassarius snails or hermit crab that came to bother her where she was sitting on the rocks, but the swimming was extremely erratic. After watching her do this with no improvement for a couple hours, I netted her out and transferred her to my QT tank so the inverts wouldn’t bother her. Moved the 3 fish that had been in QT to the DT so she could have the QT tank to himself. This morning, she's still breathing, but still basically can't swim.
Is there anything I can do at this point to help her recover? Or is she likely a goner?
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