We have had three lyretail anthias in our observation tank since January. We have not moved than to the display tank due to their small size - we are afraid larger anthias in DT will bully them. The fish have remained small but do not appear thin. One was in process of changing to male. I noticed him in the corner not hiding this am. Found him dead when I got home from work. No obvious infection. Ammonia zero per seneye. Was just going to purchase new fish to add to ot. Should I wait? Other two fish appear fine.
Lyretail anthias just died
- Thread starter mcs
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humblefish,
thank you so much for your help once again. I did not see any obvious signs of damage. attached is a photo, please try to ignore the dog hair, I am embarrassed to say it seems to be everywhere in our house.
I do think that aggression could have been an issue. The anthias are the only fish in the observation tank. Of the remaining two females, one is larger - the size of the dead male, and one is much smaller. The larger female has more intense orange color, but does not have the signs of turning into the male that the dead fish had. The smaller female is a paler orange. The larger female is clearly bullying the smaller female now. I worry about the smaller. They are very timid fish, more so than our first anthias. They hide when I enter the room. When I put food in the tank, the two females used to come out, the male hiding longer. Now the smaller female appears hesitant to come out to eat, although I did see her eat this morning.
My husband and I are in a real quandary as to home much to treat the observation tank. Wondering if we need to drain it, clean it, and start over. (It does have a refugium with live rock and algae.) It has been up and running for over a year now. Multiple fish have been observed in the tank and have done well. We are interested in purchasing a blue throat trigger, our local fish store has a nice one. The local fish store treats with copper and quarantines for us for a month. In the past, we have observed fish for an addition four to six weeks in the observation tank before joining our display tank.
@mcs I think I would black molly test your observation tank before breaking it down: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/freshwater-black-mollies-vs-marine-fish-diseases.312166/
It’s entirely possible that the male anthias died from something other than a transmissible disease. IME; once a female morphs into a male, the whole situation within the harem can get dicey.
It’s entirely possible that the male anthias died from something other than a transmissible disease. IME; once a female morphs into a male, the whole situation within the harem can get dicey.
HF
Going with the theory that aggression was responsible for the death of the one of the 3 Anthias ... does it seem likely that a second Anthia would have begun to morph into another male to promote such aggression??
Going with the theory that aggression was responsible for the death of the one of the 3 Anthias ... does it seem likely that a second Anthia would have begun to morph into another male to promote such aggression??
I think a more likely explanation is you had a female morph into a male, and shortly thereafter the same thing happened with another female. With anthias, the change can occur very quickly... and unexpectedly.
The mollies and the two remaining anthias appear to be well in the OT. Odd thing is that we lost the female anthias in our DT last night. We had two, one well into changing to male. The female was fine a week ago. The last few days she hid and stopped eating. There was some aggression noted male to female. They had gotten along very well for over six months.
