Royal Gramma Acting Funny

[money88]

So my Royal Gramma as shown in the video has been acting strange for about 2 weeks. I thought I would monitor it and see if anything changed, but nothing has. So it first started after rearranging rocks slightly one day and around the same time I tried mixing Kalkwasser in my ATO. The gramma was laying on the sand in the corner appearing that it was dying. But anytime I would nudge it or check on it, it would move around like normal (this was also during the day while the light was brightest not at night like it was sleeping).

After about a day of him laying on the sand he moved up to the corners of the tank and hasn't really moved from doing this in weeks. I think part of this may be because he is either blind or cannot see very well. When I feed him he attempts to just randomly bite at spots in the water the food hits the water like he doesn't really know where it is at. If I touch the food directly to his mouth he will eat it right from the pipette.

Any ideas what is wrong? Sometimes it appears he is gasping at the surface of the water like there is not enough oxygen in the water but the other fish are fine there is plenty of surface agitation on the DT, skimmer running in the sump, and I even put an airstone in for a brief period to see if that would help. I don't want anything to happen to the fish but I'd like to get him back to his normal self swimming and hiding in the rocks like before.

 

[Crabs McJones]

It's very hard to tell in the video, but is he rapidly breathing?

 

[money88]

It's very hard to tell in the video, but is he rapidly breathing?

it does not appear so

 

[Crabs McJones]

Could be parasites in the gills. @Big G what do you think?

 

[Big G]

How do the eyes look to you? Any cloudiness? Or bulging?

 

[money88]

How do the eyes look to you? Any cloudiness? Or bulging?

one eye looks a bit different compared to the other. and looks to be just slightly further out than the other

 

[Big G]

one eye looks a bit different compared to the other. and looks to be just slightly further out than the other

Ok. So the slight swelling of the eye could indicate a bacterial infection. Another possibility is the breathing problems could be flukes. As they attack the fish, they move from the gills (breathing problems) into the eyes. But you can usually see them or a general cloudiness. So a freshwater dip in a dark container could eliminate or confirm flukes as the problem. Look for small white sesame seed sized flukes in the bottom of the bucket as they seizure and drop off the fish.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/video-how-to-do-a-freshwater-dip.286639/#post-3487082

 

[money88]

Ok. So the slight swelling of the eye could indicate a bacterial infection. Another possibility is the breathing problems could be flukes. As they attack the fish, they move from the gills (breathing problems) into the eyes. But you can usually see them or a general cloudiness. So a freshwater dip in a dark container could eliminate or confirm flukes as the problem. Look for small white sesame seed sized flukes in the bottom of the bucket as they seizure and drop off the fish.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/video-how-to-do-a-freshwater-dip.286639/#post-3487082

I will give this a try, and keep you updated thanks!

 

[Maritimer]

These guys can be pretty shy ... does he have adequate hiding spaces in your QT?

~Bruce

 

[money88]

I have tried the dip it really just seemed to stress the fish out from what I could tell. I did not see anything on the bottom of the dip container. Could it also be from bullying possibly? There is tons of places he used to hide within the rocks that the longnose hawkfish and 2 clowns wouldnt reach him so I dont know why all of a sudden this would be happening

 

[Maritimer]

Could well be bullying.

Grammas put on a bad show, but they're pretty timid, IME.

~Bruce

 

[money88]

hmm well not sure how do I figure that out? should I put some PVC in my DT

 

[Maritimer]

You could try that ... small tubes that only the gramma could enter, perhaps.

I've found that if other, larger fish are even swimming back and forth overhead a lot, grammas can have panic-attacks.

~Bruce