Need Help Quick, think my blenny is dying

[Slick Fork]

Hi there,

I think My Zebra Blenny is on his way out and I'm hoping someone can help me help him. He seemed fine last night, came up to eat and looked fairly happy.

This morning when the lights came on he didn't come out as usual, when he did struggle out from the rocks this is what I saw...







He doesn't swim, more just struggles along the sand. All his movements are very twitchy and erratic. He is "breathing" heavily and rolls over onto his side constantly (I don't know if this is the current pushing him around or what.) I got this fish at the end of may (just before may long weekend) and he spent 4 weeks in a quarantine tank before going into the display. He has seemed very healthy until this morning

Here is a terrible picture of him being fat and happy from July 1



So what can I do????? My quarantine tank has a new fish in it and if the blenny has something I don't want to expose the new guy to it. The other tank's inhabitants are a foxface and 2 ocellaris clowns and they all look great. The blenny spends a lot of time interacting with the foxface (I don't know if it's fighting...sometimes it looks aggressive, other times it just looks like they're hanging out) Could this be a reaction from the foxface sting?

Changes I've made recently: I changed 10 gallons on thursday night, I fragged a hairy mushroom on Wednesday night, and tried a new food yesterday. Everybody had some of that and no one else is showing any ill effects.

I'll run down and do some tests so I can post the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate...
Salinity is 1.027 (with a refractometer)
Ph 8.3
Temp 26 Celcius

Any help is greatly appreciated
Thanks

[justinl]

are you sure it has been eating what you've been giving it? that thing looks like an aquatic version of nicole richie (well okay your fish is at least much less gross).

what have you been feeding and what did you switch to just now? hurry up with those params. if a fish is malnourished, it will be more prone to stress, so maybe that's what happened? it would explain why the other well fed fish are doing okay.

are you using any food supplements (like selcon or vita-chem)? if not i would suggest starting now, at least for the blenny.

i believe if a fish is foxface stung, it puffs up and the stung area goes red. do you see any unusual lesions or sores?

[Slick Fork]

Well, I'm too late. Ran downstairs and he was wedged in the rocks.

Parameters:

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0.1
nitrate 5
temp 26 celcius
salinity 1.027
ph 8.3

I watched him eat last night. I had been feeding New Life Spectrum pellets as well as freeze dried brine shrimp, last night they got new life spectrum plus "ocean nutrition formula two marine pellets"

The change in appearance and behaviour happened almost overnight. Last night I watched him eat both the NLS pellets and the new stuff. He was social and had energy.

He did not look even remotely like that picture last night. He was a lot closer to the bottom one I took 5 or 6 days ago.

[Ruth]

Sorry for you loss. Sometimes there is just no explaining fish mortality.

[justinl]

it lost that much weight in a single night? yeesh... i honestly have no idea what might have done that. sorry for the loss. it always sucks to lose a fish.