Great, thought my Coral Beauty had turned the corner...*PIC

[JEFFR259]

Well, my newish Coral Beauty was finally coming around. I ran a thread a couple weeks ago asking for advice on enticing it's appetite. I followed the directins of my LFS and RC, and took it out of QT and put it in the DT after a week. He seemed to settle in nicely, grazing on LR and starting to eat about a week ago.

Tonight, I get home from work and see this:

If you look closely, you will see about 75% of it's tail missing...just GONE! There had been zero damage to it yesterday, almost as if he ripped it off accidentaly! It is a very clean cut. I was curious as to why the CB acted shy yesterday all of a sudden, but attributed it to me messing in the tank, placing a new CocoWorm and Torch Coral. I can't imagine anyone in my tank causing this:

Yellow Coris
Perc Clown
Peppermint shrimp
Blue Leg Hermits
Turbos
Nassarius Snails
Cocoworm (I bet HE did it, lol!)

I have never heard/seen a Mantis or anything like that in the tank, but could be I suppose. My hypothesis is that the CB did it to itself. He likes to dart around behind the LR, squeezing through holes seemingly too tiny for it. I bet he cruised through and opening, and caught the tail....I dunno, probably never know...

Tonight, he's getting a little braver by the hour, venturing out more like prior to the injury. He sucked down a little bit of brine, so I guess that's a good sign.

Question is, what do I do now? Do I tear the tank apart and catch him to QT? Or do I monitoring the CB closely looking for the first sign of infection, and if that develops, tear the tank down and catch? I suppose there's no additive I can safely put in the water to prevent infection....right?

Thanks for reading this and offering advice!

 

[BrianD]

I can't imagine he did it to himself, but I have no idea.

 

[JEFFR259]

yea, no clue here Brian....crazy huh? you know this fish pretty well, and I was excited at it's turn around! Bumming big time, but hopefully it'll recover.

Think I should QT? As you know, he didn't like that before

 

[Recty]

I wouldnt quarantine until you see a problem with it. Infection can be fought against better by a less stressed fish in a nice big display tank with plenty of natural food, than it will be fought against in a small QT tank.

If he starts having problems then by all means take the steps necessary to remedy it, but for now if he is acting fine, no need to move him out of something he is just getting settled into finally. You keep moving him and you'll kill the fish just from the moves.

Weird, none of your stock list look like anything that could rip a tail off a dwarf angel, he almost had to have done it to himself, although a tail injury like that would be pretty difficult. Are any of your rocks loose a little bit? Do you see one that has toppled? I could see that type of injury occuring from a even small rock falling on the tail.

 

[Zoom]

Looks to me that you have something in the tank that like to take chunks out of the fishes tails .
It is no way the fish will do that to them self .
I will put a trap in the tank at night to see if you have any none seen crabs in there.

 

[JEFFR259]

Must be something big because it took one big chunk out of the CB's tail at once. All other fish have full, complete tails, and the CB had no damage the night before.

Maybe I'll lay a trap in there and see what I find!

 

[JEFFR259]

Recty-

That's what I think happened, but who knows, maybe there's a Mantis or something else hiding in there.

Rocks seem pretty steady to me, but I suppose anything could have shifter. He darts around between the glass and the back of the rock arrangement all the time, so I envisioned him shooting through a gap and a rock moving, pinching his tail against the glass or another rock. But, that would be one bad case of luck, the timing would have to been impecable.

Maybe I'll never know. But, I hope the CB hangs in there, definetely my favorite piece in the tank!!!!