injured royal gamma

[keifer0128]

I have 2 oscollaris clowns, watchman goby, 2 pistol shrimp, aptasia eater and a Royal Gamma. They've all been in this tank for years with the acception of the Aptasia eater. He was intoduced about 8 months ago. All have been living quite well together until yesturday. About an hour after feeding, I noticed my Royal Gamma bent in half laying on a rock & twitching with damage to his left fin. I'm assuming he was attacked. Not sure though. I thought he was dead a couple times over the next hour or two but seen another twitch hear and there so left him alone. I shut the lights out hoping he'd find a place to hide & calm himself if he had the energy. The next morning, I found him in the overflow. Have no idea how he managed to get in it. It would've been quite a leap. None the less, there he was. I've placed him in a 2 & a half gallon round aquarium kit (Marina 360) with water and a live rock from my reef tank to isolate him in hopes that he can de-stress & heal in here. He did take some frozen food fed directly to him (he can't manouver himself to chase the food) and continues to be oriented on his side & bent in half. His movements seem to be increasing. I'm wondering what else I can be doing for him. Should I be dosing his water with some sort of antibiotic as well? any suggestions would be great. Thank you
Keith

 

[eastlake]

I wouldn't start dosing him with anything just yet. Just keep an eye on him and if it starts showing symptoms then go for it. But if its eating then I wouldn't be overly concerned.

 

[Sk8r]

What are you calling an aptasia eater? Fish? Invert? The injury you describe COULD have been the pistol shrimp's doing, and a fairly light hit at that. If he's escaped organ damage, he may survive. Eating is encouraging.

 

[CStrickland]

My chalk bass got hurt the other day. Everyone was fine when I fed in the morning, and like 2 hours later he had huuge gash. If it were a person, he would have gotten stitches, you could see the muscles underneath and it was over an inch long on a 3" fish. I thought for sure he was a goner. 4 days later he's almost good as new, with a wicked scar.

It's really amazing what a healthy fish can recover from. Selcon is a great addition to fish food, it's like vitamins and it tastes good so they'll eat more to keep up their strength. I don't think there's much risk in dosing the water with stress-coat enhancers or melafix, but I'm not sure how much good they do either. Keep a close eye on ammonia in the small tank as it can creep up, and remove uneaten food to keep the water clean. Maybe take a peek at the disease subforum to get familiar with the symptoms of infection, so that you will recognize and be ready to act with more aggressive treatments like antibiotics if the wound goes sideways.