spider web on wrasse

[CEDRIC]

hello everyone

can someone help me,my wife bought me a blue cleaner wrasse yesterday....i put him in the tank, he looks like he's doing well cleaning other tangs,looking like he's having a good time..today i check the tank and cant find him...i look under a rock and there he is with some type of bubble around half his body...the only way i can describe it as a spider web or the beggining stage of some type of cocoon....now i did find him with half his body under the rock where my lobster lives..but i've never heard of a lobster doing this....needless to say he's just about gone...i doubt he last thru the day... :cry

i have no idea what this was around his body...btw when i moved him to a quaritine tank this bubble kind of came off...

[CD]

:unsure
I found the following on WetWebMedia...hopefully it will be of some help. I know our fairy wrasse builds a cocoon around itself when sleeping (normal), but it sounds as if the cleaner wrasses are different:


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Cleaner wrasse in nocturnal "cocoon"
Bob,
thanks for answering and publishing the daily Q&A. Hundreds of us can learn
from your response to one Aquarist.
tonight I came home and inspected my 54g reef/fish tank by illuminating a
dimmed room light.
To my alarm, a basic "pacific" cleaner wrasse was on its side, a bit
twisted, at the rear bottom of the tank enclosed in a transparent sort of
slime "cocoon". The slime substance appears not unlike what I have observed
being shed from certain corals such as a scroll pagoda I keep. A Yellow
Tang was exhibiting some behavior perhaps related to the enclosed Wrasse.
He was hovering and backing into the "cocoon".
Do you have any idea what I am observing? Does the wrasse exude some
protective slime in which to sleep?
Could some other predator critter excrete the slime to paralyze and later
consume lethargic sleeping fish?
I should tell you that I have lost several fish to "mysterious causes" whose
carcasses are never found.
I devour so much aquarist material - both on line and hard copy - but have
never run into a description of what I am observing tonight in my tank!
Perplexed, Richard Buonomo
>>
Interesting... don't know that I've ever heard of a Cleaner Wrasse (likely a Labroides) exuding a sleeping cocoon, though many wrasses and Parrotfishes do... And there are a bunch of organisms that might use such feeding techniques that might render your observation... And it does sound like there is a "mystery" culprit in your tank... but who? A sea cucumber? Large polychaete worm?
Bob Fenner
**********************************************

It may be of some help to find out the exact technical name for your wrasse and see if this is normal behavior. I know you mentioned he's "just about gone", but is this observation just due to the cocoon, or does the fish itself look bad also?

W.

[R_S_C]

my 6 line used to do this from time to time. its a scent cloaking device that some fish will do.

[Thunderkat]

Yup, they secrete a mucous shell around themselves every night to sleep in. I think it also protects them from external parasites. I have had all my fish get ich and the cleaner wrasse was never infected (or at least on a visible level).

If you watch them they end up eating the little shell.

[GaryP]

Just so you know, cleaner wrasses have a very low survival rate in captivity. Unfortunately, there is always an exception that gives people hope they can keep one alive. This hope is rarely justified. In the wild on a reef they have thousands of fish they can clean and feed on the parasites. Once these fish are cleaned they have nothing to feed on. No one has enough fish in a tank to provide enough food for one. Occasionally someone will get a cleaner wrasse that feeds on brine shrimp and these fish have become elevated to the level of almost being an urban legend in the hobby.

Before ThunderKat jumps in, yes he has one that feeds on flake and I have seen it. I'm not sure what the next level past being an urban level might be. A freak of nature?

[Thunderkat]

If you want your cleaner wrasse to survive (I am only saying this because you already have it) you have to get it to eat. The thing to remember about cleaner wrasses is they do eat but they are very "passive" and have small mouths.

The one I have that eats flake food will never eat flakes from the surface of the water. Sometimes they don't eat the flakes on their first pass, they have to study it first. Then they come back and eat it. (They also only eat the flakes that have the fish meal not the ones with algae in it).

If you have voracious eaters in your tank your little cleaner wrasse will starve because it "does not eat".

The way I had mine "learn" to eat was by putting vitamin B6 in the water then let it get spread out into the entire tank. Give the vitamin a few minutes to work. Then with other fish in the tank that eat put the food in the tank. The cleaner wrasse will eat after that.

Mine also likes brine shrimp, and finely cut shrimp (very tiny pieces as they have teeny tiny mouths).

My little cleaner wrasse also "hunts" for piecesof food that may have reached the bottom and eats those.

After having done reseach on cleaner wrasses I have one recommendation to make on cleaner wrasses:

DO NOT BUY CLEANER WRASSES OR SUPPORT STORES THAT SELL THEM!!!

If you buy a cleaner wrasse then all the fish that were being cleaned by the cleaner wrasse in the wild will die horribly painful deaths. How does this affect you?

The prices of the other fish you buy will skyrocket due to decreased availability of fish in the wild. Corals will also die due to the balance found in nature and the valuable cleaning provided by certain fish. This will also cause your neighbors to spontaneously combust and the resulting fire will burn your house down. All this because YOU bought a cleaner wrasse.

[saltcreepette]

ha ha, thunderkat, did you already have yours before you decided no one should buy them? (not being a jerk, just curious, I promise) :) Also what is it about B6 that gets them to eat? Ive never had them for the reasons you stated. neon gobies are known to clean, and so are canary wrasses for those who dont know. incidentally, red sea cleaners will clean as juveniles but as adults feed solely on coral polyps.

[Thunderkat]

I bought my cleaner wrasse when my fish came down with a case of ich.

I was told put one on the tank and I would have no problems with ich (some LFS are scandalous). I also bought my UV steralizer at the same time. I was also told when I was in Hawaii that it was good to have one by a fish store there too (no, I do not want to buy any lake side property in Florida :lol ).

At the time I only thought it was bad to buy the Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse as those do not adapt at all to eating prepared foods.

Vitamin B6 is an appetite stimulant, I don't know how it works but it does. It worked on me when I was a kid with mono ^_^

[saltcreepette]

sweet, thanks :)