Coral Beauty to the rescue

[Brieninsac]

I thought I'd share this little story since I'd never seen this before in my brief time in the hobby.

A couple weeks ago I was doing some work in the tank and out of the corner of my eye I see my Blue-sided fairy wrasse jumped out of the tank and landed right on the tile floor. I quickly scooped him up in a towel and placed him back in the tank.

He sunk to the bottom nose down by some rocks and I just felt awful. But then a few minutes later the craziest thing I've ever saw happened, my Coral Beauty went over to him and waived his tail in front of the wrasse, kinda like you'd fan a towel in front of someone knocked out. At first I thought he was being aggressive to the downed fish but as I watched longer he continued to do it. He'd swim around for a few seconds and then go right back to the wrasse, turn around and waive his tail in front of the wrasse's head. The wrasse was pretty out of it and didn't really react. The Coral Beauty did this for about 5-10 minutes and eventually swam off.

To my amazement a few hours later the wrasse was swimming around albeit kinda slow. A day later he was back to himself and is still thriving today. But I had never seen that before and thought it was really cool.

 

[SoloChromis]

Incredible how much there is to "just fish". Glad to hear your fairy wrasse is back in action and doing well. Maintaining a fish tank does something to those that are receptive to certain things - you pretty quickly realize how complex, intelligent and even emotional even a 2" fish can be. They form bonds, they have preferences for a whole range of things, they can become depressed, they can feel excited etc. It opens your eyes to the grand scope of things and how every person & animal, be it a fish or a dog or a whatever, is an individual that deserves respect and compassion. Who's to say what your coral beauty's intentions were, but I wouldn't be the least bit shocked if what he was displaying was honest altruism. Thanks for sharing this, it put me in a good mood and will hopefully make people think more about how they treat others :beer:

 

[humaguy]

I am as anthropomorphic as you can be but sadly, that was just aggression.
Very happy she bounced back for you!

TK