Pregnant wrasse?

[kzenoni]

I’m pretty sure my yellow wrasse is pregnant. About to pop actually. Just curious if anyone has any tips or what to do once they are born? Will my other fish eat them? Do I need to feed them anything different? Thanks in advance

 

[Labridaedicted]

They don't give live birth, so at best it would be eggs that would be fairly promptly eaten in most systems.

 

[kzenoni]

They don't give live birth, so at best it would be eggs that would be fairly promptly eaten in most systems.

Oh! Gotcha. Ok then. Thank you

 

[i cant think]

I’m pretty sure my yellow wrasse is pregnant. About to pop actually. Just curious if anyone has any tips or what to do once they are born? Will my other fish eat them? Do I need to feed them anything different? Thanks in advance

either that or someone needs to go on a diet haha.

 

[Goaway]

Very nice. Now that's good husbandry.

 

[kzenoni]

either that or someone needs to go on a diet haha.

Right!!

 

[i cant think]

Right!!

Haha, yeah!

But in all seriousness, that is excellent husbandry! I have never managed a breeding pair of anything, even clowns! I have to be doing something wrong but I can’t figure out what.

 

[Tamberav]

I hate to be the party pooper but I have spawning wrasse and they don't look like that. It looks to me like it has some internal swelling (organ's?) or very constipated. I suppose it could also be egg bound.. I seen that with mandarins... by bound.. I mean bound up... not a good thing.

Is it eating?

 

[kzenoni]

Haha, yeah!

But in all seriousness, that is excellent husbandry! I have never managed a breeding pair of anything, even clowns! I have to be doing something wrong but I can’t figure out what.

Yeah idk ‍ I didn’t do anything that I know of. I didn’t even know one was female.

 

[kzenoni]

I hate to be the party pooper but I have spawning wrasse and they don't look like that. It looks to me like it has some internal swelling (organ's?) or very constipated. Is it eating?

Well that could be it too. Idk.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Actually, I'm not an expert on the matter, but I would be seriously concerned that your fish is ill.

As was mentioned above, most wrasse (including Halichoeres chrysus - the yellow wrasse) are broadcast spawners, so they don't carry the young. Along those same lines, fish generally don't look swollen/pregnant when they're about to release eggs. Looking back through some similar threads on the forum about this same general phenomenon, it seems there is a good chance that - for one reason or another - this growth on the belly is likely not a good sign of health for your wrasse. How bad a sign it may be would be determined by what the cause of the swelling is.

You could just be overfeeding it - easy to test, just cut back on feeding it or stop feeding it for a few days and see if the swelling goes down. If it does, just feed a bit less than before or try to figure out if there's something specific in the food your giving it that could be causing bloating. It could also be constipated, so I'd say to watch and see if it poops, and - if it does - what the poop looks like (i.e. is it normal? is it white and stringy?). If you can rule out overfeeding and constipation, then things get a bit more complicated.

This thread was one of the more informative on the topic, and it mentioned multiple fish with this issue. There appeared to be no other symptoms, but the fish generally died within a relatively short time after the bump appeared (one of the fish discussed made it six months, the poster's fish made it two weeks).

Wrasse with enormous swollen belly

Yellow coris wrasse, looks like it swallowed a marble. Eating fine. Behavior fine. Have not seen it defecate (but I am not watching it 24/7). Been this way 6 weeks. No trauma or anything that I know of. Look at photos. Seems to be getting bigger, if anything. Ideas? No way I am catching it, and...

www.reef2reef.com

Some of the possibilities listed in this thread were cysts, air bubbles, parasites, sex transition gone wrong (wrasse are protogynous sequential hermaphrodites, meaning they start female and some of them change to male - typically all or most of them in our aquariums), and bloat. In the main case discussed in the thread, they were able to rule out parasites with a post-humous examination, but the post-humous exam just showed it was a bubble of liquid inside the fish, so it wasn't exactly the most informative exam.

Either way, if the fish is pooping and it isn't overfed, you may want to post this in the disease forum and get some thoughts from the Fish Medics.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

To clarify, the poster's wrasse made it two weeks from when they posted (~8 weeks in total from the onset of the swelling).

 

[Tamberav]

#fishmedic

See if anything has something to add. I am not sure there is a good treatment.

 

[Labridaedicted]

Ok. I'm home and can properly look into this now. Is the fish showing any signs of stress? This looks more like a sign of illness. Wrasses are largely if not entirely broadcast spawners and would most likely not carry eggs to the point where they would be this engorged.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Ok. I'm home and can properly look into this now. Is the fish showing any signs of stress? This looks more like a sign of illness. Wrasses are largely if not entirely broadcast spawners and would most likely not carry eggs to the point where they would be this engorged.

Also, this is a juvenile, so wouldn’t have eggs. There is some other issue, but I can’t say what it could be.
Jay