Hi there, we own a malanarus wrasse, first few months of owning her and up until recently, like a month ago (give or take by a little), she was an active swimmer and had a regular sleep routine & would bury herself like all wrasses do. She has and still does quite fine around her other tank mates, she would eat a lot of frozen mysis during feeding times, that’s what we normally feed all our fishes. We would also sometimes mix other frozen food with the mysis like fish eggs ect. She would still eat pretty regularly and up until a month or so she started acting strange, not herself.
She would start swimming to the top and around the rim/in the corner of tank. I’d catch her swimming back and forth from one end to another, with her mouth facing up by the bubbles, almost like poking it out of the water. Automatically you think it’s an air issue, but all other fishes are breathing fine, no ones gasping for air at all. You see constant small bubbles circulating the tank on a regular basis. We then started to think maybe she’s feeding on copepods because she hasn’t become skinny and still looks healthy. No visible injuries, no parasite's that we can notice on her, we did have one bad light that went out every couple hours but since then it’s been replaced. Reason I bring that issue up is because the day that it first went out, I went to lay down for a nap, woke up to the tank light off.
Due to our light doing that I noticed she had buried her self during the day. She has kept that habit up and will bury herself the best she can, sometimes half her body would stick out and not be covered. That light incident happened about 4 days ago now, since she has been seen and not seen for hours at a time. Today the new light came in mail and we immediately replaced it, I sat down just minutes ago and was watching her.
She has been laying down at the bottom of tank periodically swimming back and forth, sometimes even standing straight up like a human in the corner. I noticed as I looked closer she isn’t skiddish and lets us get real close, close enough to take a pic and video. I noticed a slight blurr/cloud like mark on one of her eyes, she also looked like she had a bubble like mark under her mouth. She appears to look lethargic but we don’t know and it’s worrying us. This odd behavior has gone on long enough and we thought she would snap out of it, please help? Of course we care for our fishes and to see any of them act out of the ordinary is worrisome. Any ideas?? Also my husband checks his water and all that quite frequently, I will post water info here soon.
