Very Strange Acclimation Behavior

[JR8999]

I just added my last fish to my DT this morning as I am starting to focus on adding corals to my currenltly FOWLR DT. I had a Line Spot Flasher Wrasse in QT for the last month. Over the last week I have made sure the salinity, PH and temp parameters are aligned between the DT and QT. They have been pretty much exact. As I have in the past, because the parameters match I put the wrasse in a bowl and slowly submerged it in the DT. To my surprise he sank like a rock to the sandbed in the bottom of the DT. He layed on his side breathing rapidly for a few minutes. After this period I no longer saw any gill movement at all and he seemed to stiffen up. I absolutely thought he was dead by some form of shock. I left him for another 5 minutes motionless. As a last resort i tapped the tank's glass near him. He immediately jumped up like he was woken out of bed and began to swim around the tank like it had been his home forever! It's been a couple more hours now and he is navigating around the tank as I would expect. Anyone ever encounter anything like this? Any ideas as to what the cause was?

 

[saltyair]

sounds like ph or salinity shock. that happened to me with my jaw fish when the bag broke on my way home from the lfs. my salinity 1.026 - theirs 1.016

 

[JR8999]

Thanks for the input but I don't believe it was that. As I noted in my post, I checked the PH and salinity (with a calibrated refractometer) immediately before the transfer and they matched exactly.

 

[airtime23]

Just playin' posssum...

 

[JR8999]

LOL....If I didn't know any better... but I said he was a LINE SPOT not a BANDED POSSUM WRASSE!

 

[Betta132]

Maybe he was being dramatic? Wrasses are known for being very overdramatic when being medicated, so yours could have been expressing a dislike of something.
Or there could be something in the DT that you can't test for, some form of contamination.

 

[Deinonych]

Just playin' posssum...

+1

Wrasses are drama queens. When I added my McCosker's to the DT, he did something similar - dropped to the sandbed and went into nighttime camo mode. After 30 minutes or so, he eventually made his way to the rockwork and was out and about later in the day.

 

[Nina51]

i'm with chris. i have 4 wrasses. every single one of them gave a performance worthy of an academy award when introduced to my dt. even in qt, they often played possum for the first couple of days. they are all now the boldest fish i have in my tank.

 

[justinky]

Linespots are very timid and may hide for a few days in your DT as I know mine did when I had one. I'd say he was just in shock from the new environment/being a drama queen like others have said.