my anthias is dieing... need to make decision fast!!! PLEASE HELP!!

[jennmac415]

My beautiful male square back anthias is dieing... a few weeks ago, he injusred his eye and it has since healed, but I believe he is blind in it now.. at first he was eating, but slowly over the last week or so, he has not eaten at all... and beleive me, I have tried everything...now for the last 5 days he has been hiding behind a rock...just staying there 24 hours a day. I have taken off the top rock and been able to look down where he is hiding to see if he is still alive and he is barely hanging on....Normally I would just let nature take its course and then get the poor thing out of the tank as soon after he expired as I could so as not to foul the water..BUT as if this was not bad enough...I am leaving Saturday for 9 DAYS!!!!! My non-fish husband will be manning the tank and I litterally have to walk him through everything he does ON THE PHONE EVERYDAY!!!!! SO........ here is the dilemma... I do not want this poor fish todie while I am gone because there is no way my husband will be able to move rocks without DESTROYING my entire taqnk to get this fish out...

Should I go ahead and euthanize him, which I have NEVER done before nor even considered it, but under these circumstances what should I do???? He is barely breathing... it makes me so sad...I don't even know if I can go through with it if I decide to, but I don't want to jeopardize the rest of my inhabitants when he dies and I am not here.


please help!!!!!

 

[mysaltyfish]

bring him to a LFS?

 

[Gwynhidwy]

I'm sorry your fish isn't doing well. Unfortunately I'm not sure there is much you can do at this point. If you have an established quarantine tank you could move the fish there, but otherwise you should probably just leave him be. If you have a good clean up crew they should keep your water from being fouled by a dead fish.

 

[jon+megan]

sorry to hear this jenn. did me make it after youraway time? my bartlett is doing virtually the same thing. i noticed he had a scratch on his eye last week and i hadnt seen him since yesterday morning and before that he had been gaping. i removed the tank lid incase there wasnt enough gas exchange going on for him. ( everybody else seemed to be breathing fine tho.). he seemed to perk up then, mouth normal and feeding too but as i say, i was concerned when he wasnt doing his thing all day yesterday
today i lifted a few large rocks away from where he usually sleeps and he swam away from me and hid again. i rearranged the rocks around him, so he can still hide but i can see him.
i was going to move him but i figure that to be more stressful than letting him be. its almost feeding time but i dont think he will be joining in

 

[asonitez]

Go to Home Depot or locate an empty 5 gallon bucket. Or you can head to your LFS and get a nice 2.5 Gallon tank for about 7 dollars. Try and isolate the fish and use some tank water in the bucket/Small Tank. Use a Small Airpump and a air Stone to highly oxygenate the water. Put the tank in a fairly dark place and purchase some black worms. For the Squareback's purchase some tiny feeder guppies. (Drip Acclimate them for 3 hours or so to make them salt water friendly.) Transfer the Anthias fish to the holding tank and wait 1 hour. Try blackworms. If the Anthias eats them with gusto then wait and feed again in a few hours. If not the blackworms will die after a minute or so. You can use a small net to get them out. Introduce the feeder guppies. They should prompt the anthias to feed. I did this for my squarebacks. It took 3 sessions of guppies before they started on frozen brine. For Tiny Anthias purchase 1 or 2 portion's of live Brine Shrimp and feed that to their holding tank. They are greedy and will eat something even if its to test it. Good luck.