Wrasses eating and spitting out food?

[DracoKat]

Hi all.

Have 2 wrasses in QT (Solon and Exquisite). Ammonia is 0.

it's day 4, and eating since day 1. I dosed Prazipro yesterday morning. they ate last night.

Today I fed them again, and they're going after the food, but spit them out again. Same food they ate in the last few days (frozen mysis and brine shrimp, soaked in Vitachem- they ignored the pellets)
I refrigerated leftovers overnight.

They ate a few, but spat out most of them.

they are both energetic and no signs of external parasites (hopefully I won't see any signs at all)

any idea why they're spitting out the food? is it the Prazipro?

 

[Labridaedicted]

My money is on med stress. As long as they're still eating some, you should be ok. How long of a prazi treatment are you doing?

 

[Duke4Life]

Are you able to get your hands on any LRS? If so their "Who's your daddy" blend my wrasses go crazy over.

 

[DracoKat]

I am leaving the tank alone, planning on doing a water change tomorrow and slowly increase the salinity (it's at the LFS low salinity still of .021).

wait about a week and do another smaller WC and dose of the prazipro.. wait 3 days and another water change. I hope I don't have to use the cupermime copper treatment.

 

[DracoKat]

Are you able to get your hands on any LRS? If so their "Who's your daddy" blend my wrasses go crazy over.

I can look today and see if the store has any!

I am happy they had a few bites today at least

 

[mfinn]

When my leopards were in quarantine, they would do the same thing.
But they would keep trying different bits of food, until they found a acceptable piece.
As long as they were swallowing a couple bites each time I wasn't too worried.
The first day or so was always the worst with a new dose of a med.

 

[eatbreakfast]

Wrasses will grab a piece, chew it with teeth in their throats, spit it out, then grab an appropriately sized piece to swallow.

This also allows them to get a taste for what they are trying to eat. In a case of leftovers refrigerated overnight, they may not be especially fond of the taste. Newly mixed food should be eagerly eaten.

 

[SeaDweller]

EB is correct, wrasses "chew" their food by taking it in and spitting it out.

Also prazi has been known to change and suppress fish's appetite while they're medicated with it.

 

[Salty1962]

Just make sure the food is a good size for them to eat. That way they won't have to chew it up as much. I even cut down my mysis shrimp. Agreed on med induced causing them not to eat as much. Mine didn't eat as much in qt. Stress..

 

[eatbreakfast]

I've found that wrasses show preference to the largest pieces they can fit in their mouth. I think they are able to get more meat out of the shell and then spit a lot of the shell out.