Frayed fins: "normal" defect?

[NicoleC]

I have several babies with frayed or otherwise damages fins. I was thinking it was due to aggression, but my bullies are gone and the fins are not healing.

Is this a normal defect? Or maybe they are just taking longer to heal than I would expect?

I hate to cull fish for something cosmetic, but I can't imagine anyone would want fish with frayed fins. Although I could probably charge a bundle for one with Nemo "lucky fin" -- which I don't have!

And if 25% of my survivors have frayed fins and 50% are misbars, is it safe to safe that my breeding pair doesn't have the best genes? I don't know how many captive bred generations deep my pair is, but at least I don't seem to have any jaw deformities. For a while I thought some might have imperfect gill covers, but they eventually grew in.

 

[phender]

I would guess that your frayed fins are environmentally caused. The pecking order of the babies doesn't go away just because you removed the bullies.

I had a large number of misbars in my first batch of ocellaris fry. As I got better as keeping the babies alive, my percent of misbars went down to almost zero. I am sure there is some genetic component, but I think there is a large developmental component as well.

 

[NicoleC]

Hmmm. But it's mostly the biggest ones left with the frayed fins! They are still young yet, so I will give them more time before considering... final solutions.

 

[Kathy55g]

I think of it more as an injury than a defect. My ocellaris so far have not gotten the frayed fins, but I bought a firefish once that had frayed fins and almost no tail, and it all grew back beautifully. Of course there was no aggression in my tank as opposed to the LFS.

I think time will help, as well as a larger tank.

 

[NicoleC]

Injured fins do heal, Kathy, I was just questioning if perhaps it *wasn't* an injury.

 

[clownfish75]

I have one perc baby that has 2 splits in its tail that doesnt seem to heal up, but the fish is fine at the moment and it is a few months old now.

Christian

 

[David M]

I'd isolate one of the "frayed fin" babies to see if it heals up, then you will know.