My Pink Margin keeps trying to comit suicide!

saltyhog · Apr 15, 2016

Disclaimer-I have tight fitting screens on my DT and they only come off when I feed or for maintanence.

That said I've had a notable number of jumpers (all wrasse) over the last year. My H. chrysus twice and my C. ryukyuensis twice but my Pink Margin fairy wrasse wins the prize with 4 jumps in the last year. He's the boss wrasse of 10 in my tank but to put it mildly, he gets a little excited at feeding time. All of his jumps have been while I was feeding. He always looks like death for 10 or 15 minutes, goes and hides and is fine the next day.

This time he outdid himself. He jumped behind the tank...square in the middle of a 6' tank. I couldn't reach him from the side or by reaching over the sump. I was panicking because he was flopping around and was completely covered in "dust bunnies". He looked like the lint trap on my dryer! I finally used my 2 foot cleaning tool to rake him close enough to grab, rinsed him off in some extra salt water I had ready and put him back. He was probably out of the water 3-4 minutes but it seemed like a lot longer when it was happening. Unbelievably he is out and about today like nothing happened!

What's your record for the most jumps survived?!

zoomonster · Apr 15, 2016

Murphy's law has always applied to mine. Jumpers always jump at night or when no one is around. Only once did one jump, get seen and saved. I lost a few fish, over time, before I finally got the tank airtight. Even after the first time I thought I had it sealed up a china and a red velvet chased each other out of the tank through a 3/4" gap in the back. Found them dried out on top of each other. Tank top is just about airtight now and no one has escaped in some time. Funny thing is I have a big female pink margin that's never had any inclination to jump. Some of my Anthia's are another matter and at least one has gotten in the overflow at least 3 times before he gave up. As far as feeding time they get crazy too but no jumpers. Just a few that flip water in my face.

saltyhog · Apr 15, 2016

So far I've not had any casualties since I've been standing right there every time. One really weird one was my diamond tail flasher that went missing for several weeks. One morning I opened the stand door to change filter socks and there he was in the sump. Evidently he had jumped into the overflow without me noticing and had lived there for some time until getting sucked down the drain!