hockeygolfer9
New member
Last week I got a Royal Gramma from my LFS. After drip acclimating it I put the fish in the tank and it immediately went into hiding. I did a 50% water change 3 days later and I know the fish was still alive then. A couple days after this I saw my hermit crabs eating the dead Royal Gramma. About a day before this I noticed my Mandarin fish was gasping for breath. He was still eating and swimming around this time so i figured he was just stressed from the water change. After the Gramma's death his gasping got worse, he stopped eating, and I noticed a couple semi transparent skin tags on him. When he continued to get worse I took him and my small clownfish out of my main tank into a quarantine tank. The clownfish seems to be doing fine but the mandarin has looked on the brink of death for several days. I finally decided to do a freshwater dip (I'm aware this is bad for the mandarin due to their slime coat) because I suspected it may be gill flukes. I did not see any parasites falling off him in the water. He is not back in the quarantine tank and is in bad shape. I figured he was a goner a couple of days ago. At this point I just want to figure out what is wrong with him so I can have a chance to save my clownfish if he falls ill. The mandarin is particularly hard to diagnose because of his vivid coloration and thick mucus. I did not notice anything on the Royal Gramma before it dies, but it also spent all its time hiding in the live rock so I never actually saw it up close. The mandarin fish now has white in the iris of his eyes, they are not cloudy but a bright white and is gasping rapidly at the bottom of the tank.
