sick six line
 

had this guy for a couple weeks.was doing good eating lots of mysis and cyclopteeze.then this morning i couldnt find him and i come home from work and hes wedged himself into the rock and is breathing real hard.i just went to look at him and he seems to have some sorta slime covering his face and gills and hes is trying to spit out a blob but he can only get it part way out then is forced to suck it in.hes laying on his side and he has cloudy patches on him.wondering if he was sick all along or is something wrong in my tank.also i noticed today my glass is covered in pods thousands of them.there were none yesterday.

As far as i know wrasse cover them selves with a coccon like thing when they sleep. Maybe thats what it is.

Never heard of this. Never seen it on any wrasse I've had.

Well i know my flasher wrasse does it.

I have read about it before. I have never owned any form of wrasse so have never seen it personaly.

I'm taking a shot in the dark here but maybe he ate something that didn't agree with him or got caught in a coral war (ie stung). I have also heard of some type of worm that excretes a mucas to catch its prey. I belive it stuns them. Rare in home aquriums I belive. ( and I don't mean tube worms etc.)

Can you catch him and try to take the stuff out of his mouth????

Hope he's Ok

well this morning hes come out of the rock but he is laying on the sand and still struggling to breathe.if there is no improvement by the time i get home from work i think i will take him out of the tank if i can.

Parrot fish cover themselves in slime/mucous when they sleep, to the best of my knowledge wrasses don't do this.

Doug

Parrots and SOME wrasses will cover themselves in the slime while sleeping never seen it myself but according to Fenner they do.

well combined with stress could this mucous be a problem for the fish?

Well i know mine does it and next time he sleeps somewhere i can take a picture of it i will.

mine always sleeps in a mucus coccon every morning i see it floating around the tank,many times when we get six lines in they have produced one to,the heavy breathing might be due to a parasite ich etc ,how are the other fish doing .

http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=29485

http://www.masa.asn.au/main.php?page...042409400_4427

Hope this helps.

Christy :)

Mucous cocoons for sleeping is a pretty common occurence with wrasses. I don't know why they choose to do it or not do it some nights, but I have seen my sixline do it occasionally, as well as my fairy wrasses.

http://www.canreef.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12509&

I have a few other links that reference this (see the thread I just linked).

Wow. I never knew. Thanks for the info folks.