Change in behavior, permanant? Blue Head Wrasse

Fitz19d

New member
TLDR at the end.

Got a blue head wrasse from a tank break down where they didnt even know what it was. I've had it in my 300g for close to 3 months. It's an adult, and initially was very skittish. Once it came out of the rocks more it would rarely get darted at slightly by my H. Tusk. It as well as a leopard and melanarus are the wrasses in my tank.

I recently had an ick breakout detailed in another post. Took a risk since I felt the alternative was riskier. Didn't work out well.

The blue head seemed to get cloudy white first/fastest of the other fish and had slept with the fish with ick that died. (A like 3 inch blue throat trigger.)

As it got sick it started heavily harassing and attacking my bigger 4-5 inch blue throat who would hide in the rocks. Never had shown any aggression towards it ever before. On day 3 as I was getting hospital tanks ready to remove all the fish for a round of hypo and going fallow in DT, the wrasse while at work managed to get the trigger to jump out open back of my hood.


TLDR
Ready to catch fish and put them in treatment. I've been trying to resist the urge to slowly gut this thing in revenge. I'm wondering if the bout of illness possibly triggered the aggression? Maybe associated disease with that type of fish? Right now after treatment I'm trying to decide between selling it, or whether to just keep the thing since it's already put me thru enough headache.

I am firm on wanting to keep a trigger (was trying for a pair). Wrasse shows no sign of aggression towards anything else and seems to be between out breaks. Do you think this was passing, or liable to have trouble with trying a blue throat again later?


Full size ~12 inch Aussie Tusk
Adult Flame Angel
4-5" Sailfin
2 Clowns,
Adult Leopard wrasse
Adult Blue Head wrasse
Adult? Melanarus wrasse
Adult Salt water Mono Argentus
6" Foxface Lo

** Blind zebra bar goby that jumped out of it's specimen box I'd been feeding it in and swam around for quite a while without harrassment despite being a tasty thin long morsel. (Tusk already in hospital tank)
 
IME, all of the ones I've dealt with have a nasty attitude. When I ran a local LFS a few years back, we had a blue head that was bought and returned 3 separate times. Every time I would warn the customer, and every time I'd get something along the lines of "it'll be fine, it's going into a predator tank with all larger fish". Lo and behold, about 1-2 weeks later, the little bugger showed back up in a 5g bucket with a story about what fish it killed. I finally threw it into our 600g live rock bin, and never ordered another one. Others experience might be different, but I personally haven't met one that "played nice with others"...
 
Back
Top