What is this jawfish doing?

[lljdma06]

I've got a mated pair of pearly jawfish in my tank. And recently I've noticed a curious behavior in one of them. The mouth is shut and he's flapping his gill plates as if fanning something. The pair get along fine and sometimes are in the same burrow complex. They have two adjoining ones.

Here's the video. I'll try and get a better one, but if you look, you can see the flapping.



What is it doing? It's eating fine and the parameters are actually excellent. It's a macro tank. Lots of nutrient export, I guess. ammonia, 0, nitrite 0, nitrate, like trace only, it's almost zero, sg 1.025, ph 8.2, Ca+ 440

I'll check on it again when I get home from work. I didn't prune my Halimeda in time and a bit of it went sexual a few days ago. I removed it in time and then did a vigorous prune and nothing else has happened, but I want to do a water change. It's FL/Caribbean biotope.

Thanks in advance if you can answer my question. I suspect breeding behavior, but I've never kept jawfish, so I don't know for sure. All the videos I've seen of a male holding was with fry already.

 

[Sigmund]

Maybe I'm missing something in the video but it seems like pretty typical hovering behavior that I have seen in jawfish I have had. Appears at one point he might be reacting to a reflection of himself in the glass, but other than that seemed pretty typical of a jawfish hovering in the current above it's burrow.

 

[lljdma06]

No, I know, he's hovering above his burrow. They do this a lot. I'm wondering about the gill flapping. It's rather prominent. The other jawfish isn't flapping her gills in that manner though. It seems a rather deliberate motion rather than normal breathing action.

 

[michael_cb_125]

Jawfish are mouthbrooders, perhaps he is holding eggs.


~Michael

 

[michael_cb_125]

Another possibility is gill flukes or some other parasitic infection.

~Michael