Tricky or Finicky Eater Thread

lion king · Sep 28, 2021

Montagne said:
First off, thank you all for your thoughts and input!

I received the Black Leopard Wrasse (BLW), a citron butterfly and a lunate wrasse from an online retailer 10 days ago now. The BLW arrived in rough shape and literally spent its first 3 days lying on its side which I attributed to gill damage during shipping. After its first 30 min Methylene Blue dip (https://humble.fish/methylene-blue/) on day 3 it regained some strength and resumed swimming.

The Citron butterflyfish arrived with a prominent white mark on its upper lip that has since been receding so bag rub sounds really likely for both fish.

Yesterday, after a full day of GC in the water column, the BLW ate 4 live black worms over 3 feedings so I took this as a sign of improvement and went forward with its third methylene blue dip last night. Although it seemed to help initially, I will be discontinuing MB dips going forward since it appears to actually be causing increasing respiratory distress to the point I did not think it was going to make it through last night. The dip has been aerated for the full duration each time.

Today, however, it has been swimming along the surface of the tank for well over an hour. It's breathing heavily whenever it pauses for a break. It did this yesterday but only for about 20 minutes and ended up eating shortly afterwards.

Is this piping? I have not seen a fish do this before. I have been actively trying to keep oxygenation up via the return pump pointing at the surface, an additional air pump running a sponge filter and an Oxydator Mini.

The only roe products I'm able to find locally is from reef nutrition, have you tried it?

I made sure to add "freshwater" sand at the suggestion of this article from Marine Collectors (https://www.marinecollectors.com/blogs/news/how-to-pt-2-success-with-leopard-wrasses) in hopes that I'll eventually get the wrasse healthy enough to medicate with copper as apparently it will not absorb it the same way aragonite sand will.

Prior to quarantining this order, the tank had been running for 6+ months so it has an active copepod and amphipod population scurrying around. I'm actually a bit discouraged the wrasse hasn't made a dent into the population of copepods on the glass. Ugh.

That action is usually indicative of gill irritation. I don't see fish live very long after multiple treatments with meth blue, and I don't see leopard wrasses live very long after copper treatment.

Montagne · Sep 28, 2021

lion king said:
That action is usually indicative of gill irritation. I don't see fish live very long after multiple treatments with meth blue, and I don't see leopard wrasses live very long after copper treatment

Noted on the MB and copper, thank you. Are there any other means of addressing gill irritation?

Would you mind sharing your leopard wrasse QT procedure?

lion king · Sep 28, 2021

First off my qt is more of an observational, I only use gc as a prophylactic for certain species, and any other meds is after a confirmed diagnosis. With the leopaed wrasse I include sand, simple play sand from home depot, a mature rock with micro algae from one of my displays. I seed the rock with pods, if you don't have your own, a bottle from the lfs. I begin offering live black worms and live brine shrimp. After they seem to settle in and are eating the pods, grazing the micro and taking the other live offerings, I start to mix in frozen brine and mysis with the live brine and live black worms. After they have started eating the frozen food I start offering other food like Hikari mega marine or other appropriate frozen foods.