Blackline Blenny Behavior

[Mbartoloni7]

Hi All,

I am new to the forum, but I have been keeping saltwater fish for about 7 years (kept a 180 FOWLR with moderate success). Two years ago I set-up a 26gal aquarium with the hopes to make it a reef tank eventually. Currently the tank is filtered by an Fx5 (only bio, chemi pure blue and filter floss (changed once a week)) and about 20lbs of live rock. I have good success with the tank so far, standard parameters all in order. Current inhabitants are two black ice clownfish (2 years old in the tank) and a blue reef chromis (1.5months in the tank). I added a Blackline Blenny about two weeks ago and for the first week he was hiding a lot and exhibited weird behavior (curling up) but overall seemed healthy and was taking food. The last two days I noticed that when he swims to the front he is gets blown around like a helicopter, I think he is on his way out but wanted to confirm. The only reason I am raising the question, is because he seems to swim okay when he is in the rock work.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Big G]

That is odd behavior for sure. When I have a fish that is demonstrating some difficulty, often a bath or treatment in methylene blue seems to help. The O2 boost provided by the MB helps not only the gills to transpire O2 but helps heal any unseen internal injuries.

Has the fish been treated with any meds, copper, etc.? Was the fish shipped to you?

 

[Mbartoloni7]

It actually passed away last night. No treatment with Meds. I think it was just a bad fish from the shipper, I have shockingly had some poor success with tank bred fish. I won't name the online retailer, but unfortunately I've placed two orders recently with the company and have had poor success with entire orders. It's unfortunate because I have historically had good success with the company, but I most likely won't be ordering from them going forward. Thankfully, my LFS is getting shipments again, so I will probably stick to supporting a local business.