My pintail fairy wrasse is being extremely dramatic

[lba4590]

I have a fat healthy pintail fairy wrasse that just completed QT and introduced to my DT about an hour ago.

I acclimated him for about 20 mins adding tank water and dumped him in. He was being a drama queen in the bucket first off, and an extreme drama queen when I added him to the tank - you’d think I put him in a tank full of acid, he was practically walking on water flopping around. Then he stuck to the overflow for about 10 mins and I thought he was a goner.

Now he’s frantically swimming around at the surface, but his color has mostly returned, he’s breathing less heavily, and the tank is heavily aerated, but every now and then it looks like he’s gasping at the surface. Every fish in my DT is extremely docile, there is no bullying at all, everyone is pretty much avoiding him, probably because he’s acting so crazy. I originally had the lights on but figured the lights were freaking him out as they are much brighter than what he had in QT. Didn’t seem to help much turning them off.

He’s been through copper and GC, ate extremely well throughout. Is this “normal” stress behavior or is there anything I can do? I wish he’d hide or something! I’ll be SO upset if he dies..

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Did you dim your lights, not off completely, just dim, to help it settle in? Just checking, the QT wasn’t lower salinity than the DT was it?
Jay