Last Friday I brought in a yellow tamarin wrasse. Planned to get a leopard but this guy was the only option. He was 4 weeks at the LFS (in a bare bottom tank) and was lying on his side on the floor. I examined him and saw that he was essentially looking intact and gave a fight on his way to the net. I skipped quarantine and added him while shutting the lights off He immediately started eating from the heavily algae-covered rocks instead of hiding in the sand. However, he swims in a strange way sometimes as if he has floating problems. This morning I almost got a heart attack as he was lying on the sand looking dead except he was breathing. I went to get an antibiotic and the net to get him out and try a last-minute treatment. When I was back he was swimming normally and brutally biting the substrate (you could hear the sound almost like a Bengai cardinal). Later he ate from the mussel and some bloodworms. Any advice as to how to keep this guy? Is it possible that after 4 weeks w/o sand he used to play dead instead of "diving in"?
Also here is a time-lapse of my substrate at night to show how densely populated our tanks can get:
Recommend to use a big screen
