Da_Neefer
Guest
This is probably the weirdest fish keeping story I’ll ever have to relate to anyone even with another 10 or 20 years of keeping reefs or freshwater. Thus it is a must share.
I was lucky enough to pick up @Holly94583’s Copperband Butterfly from her this last weekend. Extremely healthy fish from an extremely healthy tank that has the rare habit of being an aggressive eater with frozen food. I would not buy one myself and potentially go through the process of losing two or three fish before I got one that lived and ate frozen so this is awesome.
Put him in an acclamation box for a day and he was ignored by the rest of the tank inhabitants so I introduced him. Couple hours later he’s already been eating and I’ve got about five frag‘s to glue onto the rockwork. So I do my normal thing with a big dollop of thick superglue and attach them.
About an hour later, maybe two, I noticed there’s this really white heavy fringe around his beak. I couldn’t imagine this being a fungal outbreak in that short of a time period. Then it dawned on me, he literally stuck his beak into a dollop of superglue that he probably thought was a mysis shrimp. Possibly one of the most delicate mouths in all of fish keeping… and the hungry idiot glued his mouth shut with a mouth full of superglue.
So feeling horrible and guilty and to a degree somewhat fatalistic, I put the trap in the tank but had no luck catching him last night.
In the middle of my workday he wanders into the trap so I trigger it and now I have him out of the tank in my hands with a pair of tweezers. As delicately as I could (scared shizless) I started picking at the super glue. I was able to get most of it off but not all. He could actually eat but I was afraid that I had damaged his beak. Fast forward to four or five hours later looking at him before lights out tonight and thank everything I can think of, I can’t see any damage to his beak nor any superglue left.
One of the craziest things I’ve ever dealt with in fish keeping and something I hope to never repeat!
I was lucky enough to pick up @Holly94583’s Copperband Butterfly from her this last weekend. Extremely healthy fish from an extremely healthy tank that has the rare habit of being an aggressive eater with frozen food. I would not buy one myself and potentially go through the process of losing two or three fish before I got one that lived and ate frozen so this is awesome.
Put him in an acclamation box for a day and he was ignored by the rest of the tank inhabitants so I introduced him. Couple hours later he’s already been eating and I’ve got about five frag‘s to glue onto the rockwork. So I do my normal thing with a big dollop of thick superglue and attach them.
About an hour later, maybe two, I noticed there’s this really white heavy fringe around his beak. I couldn’t imagine this being a fungal outbreak in that short of a time period. Then it dawned on me, he literally stuck his beak into a dollop of superglue that he probably thought was a mysis shrimp. Possibly one of the most delicate mouths in all of fish keeping… and the hungry idiot glued his mouth shut with a mouth full of superglue.
So feeling horrible and guilty and to a degree somewhat fatalistic, I put the trap in the tank but had no luck catching him last night.
In the middle of my workday he wanders into the trap so I trigger it and now I have him out of the tank in my hands with a pair of tweezers. As delicately as I could (scared shizless) I started picking at the super glue. I was able to get most of it off but not all. He could actually eat but I was afraid that I had damaged his beak. Fast forward to four or five hours later looking at him before lights out tonight and thank everything I can think of, I can’t see any damage to his beak nor any superglue left.
One of the craziest things I’ve ever dealt with in fish keeping and something I hope to never repeat!
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My leopard wrasses love inspecting and pecking at anything new or gets moved so I leave newly glued frags in the sump for a bit to cure before putting them in the display.
