You can't make this stuff up!
Yesterday I walked up to my tank and spotted my Lennardi floating belly up on the substrate being pushed along by the current and thought oh crap, he's dead! So I went ahead and stuck my hand in the tank to scoop him up and he had some signs of life, but I noticed he had marks on either side of his body near his tail fin that resemble stings from an anemone ( I have 14!). Hollered at the hubby to grab an acclimation box so I could put him in the box with some substrate and just watch him to see what happens.
I checked on him frequently, poor guy is on his side in the "hook" position, which most of us know is not a good sign for a wrasse, and he is breathing heavy and just completely listless. as the day progresses his breathing is getting slower and more shallow, I decided to squirt a little food in there to see if he would respond to no avail. So off go the lights, turn down the power heads so minimize stress on the poor guy and I am hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
Flash forward to this morning and I go in to look at the fish and there is zero signs of life, no sign of breathing from the gills and no eye movement. I was going to go ahead and flush him then, but was running late for work and decided to go ahead and take care of it when I got home thinking that he would be safe from being picked on in there.
Get home from work and the first thing the hubby says is "wow, your fish made a pretty remarkable recovery"........say What??? Sure enough I walked in there and there is the Lennardi, like a little puppy swimming happily in his little acclimation box! That darn fish came so close to being flushed just 5 hours earlier!
So for the time being I am going to keep him in there a few extra days and add some extra vitamins to his food and monitor him while I work on getting the rest of the anemones out of my tank. But I guess the moral of the story is, like coral, don't count them out just because they are knocking on death's door. But I am curious if anyone else has had experiences with fish being stung by anemones and surviving?
Yesterday I walked up to my tank and spotted my Lennardi floating belly up on the substrate being pushed along by the current and thought oh crap, he's dead! So I went ahead and stuck my hand in the tank to scoop him up and he had some signs of life, but I noticed he had marks on either side of his body near his tail fin that resemble stings from an anemone ( I have 14!). Hollered at the hubby to grab an acclimation box so I could put him in the box with some substrate and just watch him to see what happens.
I checked on him frequently, poor guy is on his side in the "hook" position, which most of us know is not a good sign for a wrasse, and he is breathing heavy and just completely listless. as the day progresses his breathing is getting slower and more shallow, I decided to squirt a little food in there to see if he would respond to no avail. So off go the lights, turn down the power heads so minimize stress on the poor guy and I am hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
Flash forward to this morning and I go in to look at the fish and there is zero signs of life, no sign of breathing from the gills and no eye movement. I was going to go ahead and flush him then, but was running late for work and decided to go ahead and take care of it when I got home thinking that he would be safe from being picked on in there.
Get home from work and the first thing the hubby says is "wow, your fish made a pretty remarkable recovery"........say What??? Sure enough I walked in there and there is the Lennardi, like a little puppy swimming happily in his little acclimation box! That darn fish came so close to being flushed just 5 hours earlier!
So for the time being I am going to keep him in there a few extra days and add some extra vitamins to his food and monitor him while I work on getting the rest of the anemones out of my tank. But I guess the moral of the story is, like coral, don't count them out just because they are knocking on death's door. But I am curious if anyone else has had experiences with fish being stung by anemones and surviving?