Help! Leopard Wrasse not eating and pretty lethargic

[Hjnlssmith]

Hey Everyone. I picked up a leopard wrasse this weekend at our local fish store. It has been in my tank for 2 days now and is still not eating. It buries itself in the sand fairly immediately and does not come out. We have to carefully prod for him. I don't know what to do to help it.

I located it a few minutes ago and transferred it to a QT tank and put some food in the tank to see what it will do. See attached video. Parasites?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hey Everyone. I picked up a leopard wrasse this weekend at our local fish store. It has been in my tank for 2 days now and is still not eating. It buries itself in the sand fairly immediately and does not come out. We have to carefully prod for him. I don't know what to do to help it.

I located it a few minutes ago and transferred it to a QT tank and put some food in the tank to see what it will do. See attached video. Parasites?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

No attachments.
They often do this but if there is more- need images under white lighting

 

[Hjnlssmith]

Sorry, had to resize the video file size

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

How long did the store have it before you got it?
It isn’t unusual for newly imported wrasse to bury for long periods, or on a reverse time cycle to us.
Jay

 

[Hjnlssmith]

I think they got it a couple of days before I bought it. I just read another thread on this forum about similar experiences with leopard wrasse including blue star and they say in some cases their wrasse stayed buried for several days before coming out on their own. Here is the link.

Blue Star and Leopard Wrasse Successes

Who has had success with these wrasses? What were you able to get them to eat? I got two females on Tuesday. I thought for sure that my Melanarus was going to harass them but that hasn’t been the case. I haven’t seen them eat. I put Nori sheets, fresh shrimp, clams, mysis, frozen bloodworms...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Hjnlssmith]

I was also told that leopard wrasse like to be around other leopard wrasse and do not do well on their own. Has anyone heard this?

 

[Hjnlssmith]

An update:

I ended up putting the blue star wrasse back into the main tank (self buried immediately) and also introduced a black spotted leopard wrasse to the tank a couple of days ago. The spotted wrasse has been lively.

Yesterday we coaxed the blue star out of the sand and the two wrasse swam together for a little bit until the blue star buried once again.

Today, yhe blue star came out of the sand on its own and swam around a bit and then went back under. Seemed to be ok and happy to see that it chose to come out. Fingers crossed.