EAC
New Member
I recently bought a lawnmower blenny from my LFS to help graze down the hair algae that's growing in my (newish) tank. I acclimated him over about twenty minutes with (fast) drip acclimation and then dropped him in. For the first four or five days, he was fine: darting around, getting along with his tankmates. Then, a few days ago, I noticed that he was leaning to one side pretty dramatically and breathing quickly. When he tried to swim, he'd do corkscrews and circles and end up still leaning over in a new place, often lying entirely on his side. I've relocated him to a QT and I'm keeping an eye on him. He's still alive and active after a few days, and he doesn't look particularly skinny, but the problems leaning and swimming are still present, as you can see in the video.
I've seen a few other threads that touch on this topic and people have thrown out all sorts of explanations: internal parasites, paralysis stemming from neurological problems, swim bladder issues, some sort of starvation induced fugue, etc. But so far none of those threads seem to have clear answers, only speculation.
My DT contains a few other fish--all of which are doing well. I haven't lost a fish to disease in more than three months. There's nothing particularly aggressive in the tank. And the blenny himself is chugging along after several days in the QT. I have a long-spine urchin in my DT, and it occurred to me that the blenny may have gotten poked. But if that happened I'd have thought either the blenny would have died or recovered by now. So what's going on here?
