Strange Anthia Death

[mysis]

This morning i turned my lights on, and behind one of my corals i noticed my lyretail anthia (female) and it looked very pale and i noticed it gills weren't moving so i pulled it out, and the fish had no marks on the body, all i noticed was that it's mouth was open as wide as possible, is this some sort of disease or did the poor thing die from stress or something like that.

 

[mysis]

anybody have any ideas?

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

Was your Anthias in a 40 gallon aquarium? How long did you have it? How often did you feed it? What type of water flow do you have? Got a skimmer?

 

[mysis]

yes it was in the 40 gallon, i had it 3 days, fed it 2 times a day, flow is over 20 x per hour and i haven't got a skimmer. And all the other fish are fine which is yellow headed sleeper goby, 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 blue green reef chromis.

 

[BTTRFLYGRL]

Anthias are not the hardiest of fish...not good beginner fish

 

[raddogz]

What kind of other fish do you have in the tank? I recall Anthias being bullied to death (literally) by damsels in a previous tank (at the time we didn't have a very conscientous aquarium maintenance person).

The poor things were chased into the corners behind the powerheads that were in the tank. They succombed to the stress in a few days and died. It was at that point I took matters into my own hands, and the guy let go.

 

[Angel*Fish]

Re: Strange Anthia Death

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6627287#post6627287 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mysis
and the fish had no marks on the body, all i noticed was that it's mouth was open as wide as possible,

I had this same anthias experience! I lost 2 that way. I found one just like yours --- mouth wide open like it was posing for a gamefish mounting :eek2:

But the other death was actually witnessed by my 20 year old daughter who says the fish was having an aggression match with it's reflection in the glass then it just went crazy and started turning backflips, then sunk to the bottom & was still for maybe 20-30 min. & then died - same awful mouth thing.

Heart attack?
Brain disease?

 

[tryffin]

I had the same think happen last week, one of my three lyretails died. I found it behind the rocks first thing in the morning, but it wasn't discolored at all so it must have died just before that. Same thing, mouth open etc... but my lights hadn't come on so it wasn't attacking it's reflection. I did notice the day before it's breathing was a bit labored, so this wasn't totally unexpected.

It's been 3 weeks now since I got them, and the other 2 are doing fine (they already act like they will form a pair, both are currently females.) Not sure if i'll add another one, or if it's best to just leave it at two ... are they aggressive already when they're young?

Was your chromis aggressive towards the anthia? Perhaps yours just didn't make it through all the shipping stress, any idea how long the store had it? Almost every fish death I've had has been less than 2-3 weeks from being flown in to the store..

 

[fishpimp69]

just had one die after 4 months, lucky that the other 4 are still there since these are beautiful fish indeed. But this one looked like it was going to go for a month now. The fins started to deteriorate. It still ate but spent most the time in the rocks. These are actually pretty delicate fish, and I have now reasons why this fish died.

 

[fppf]

I got 2 in and 1 died after about a week. Doing fine, then one night it started to breath really heavy, next morning dead. The other one is doing good.