New flasher wrasse lying on side

Hey guys and girls,

Today there was a sale at the LFS so I took the plunge and got my self a few things. I got a flasher wrasse of some species, and a skunk cleaner shrimp.

After bagging them up and taking them home, I went to acclimate them and found the wrasse just lying on its side. Nearly motionless..... I acclimated them as I normally would, drip for about 40minutes, and then put him in my tank and still motionless.... He basically just fell down to the bottom and is lying on his side only moving a little bit.

I called the fish shop and they said its my problem.... ..... "GRRRR LFS!!!"..... but aside from that I need some help on things I can do to help him get through.

Its odd because I watched him in the tank, he looked active, colourful and I even watched him eat, as the sale went late. So I was super suprised to see him motionless in the bag....

I have heard that for the first few days they are really timid? And hide in caves and dont come out much.... Could this be it? But its just doing it on the side of the glass? (Sorry theres no photos as its currently lights out).

The skunk cleaner and all my other fish are swimming around healthy as larry.

My params atm:
Ammo: 0.25 as always lol. Bloody API kit.
Nitra: 0
Nitri: 0
pH: 8.3
Cal: 470
Alk: 10ish
Mg: 1320

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

How long has it been this way?

My leopard wrasse did the same,bought healthy and eating,got it home,put in the acclimation bucket and she curled up and looked to be dead/dying,completely motionless.Turned out to be just a opossum tactic they use to "play dead",after an hour or so,she snapped out of it and has been fine since.

Hope this is your case.

 

It probably hasnt even been in the tank for an hour yet. So fingers crossed all turns out well.

 

timid might be one thing, but my wrasse was all over the place when I got it. But it's a Christmas wrasse... The only fish I've had do the laying on it's side bit was my clowns.

The unfortunate nature of the marine part of this hobby is that No LFS really guarantees marine life. at least with orders you get the arrive alive but it sounds like that didn't even happen...

You can wait him out and prey he might have gone in to a little bit of shock. and will be up and running in a bit... Hopefully

 

Hopefully its OK... Fingers crossed its shock but I dont think it is for some reason. Gives me a bad vibe.

 

Yup,thats what I figured with mine,the stress of transferring,then acclimating from the lfs' water to mine was the likely culprit.

Fingers crossed for ya too.

 

Flashers stress very easy, and do such very severely. What you've described is not out of the norm for flashers upon acclimation. However, any stress from your tank's current inhabitants during this period may cause doom. It's for this reason, I especially advocate using an acclimation box with flashers. It give them their own time to adjust and recover from this stress.

 

It is fine this morning. Must have recovered over night, cause I put it in at lights out.

Its swimming around, very active and eating. YAY

 

Awesome, congrats