Angel gone............gutted !!

[Col]

HI,

I posted on here a couple of months ago with my sick emperor angel 4" juvenile who had brookynela. Thanx to you guys I had it in quarantine with copper for a while and it made a full recovery. It has been king of the tank for the last 2 months feeding 3 times daily and more. Last night after greedily feeding and looking very healthy I looked round and could not believe my eyes..........it was upside down on the sand, breathing was shallow and in distress.:confused: At first I thought it had got itself stuck in the rockwork so I moved it to release it. But it just lay there paralysed as if it could not move. I gave it a prod to see if it could swim and it moved into a cave at about 10.30 last night. Came down this morning and it was dead floating on the surface:eek: There are no marks on the fishes body. It is still very blue and white not even pale. I had just done a water change last week and params are fine. My wife is convinced it has been stung by my radiata. It does go over to it and the radiata responds with a display of fins. Could this be the culprit ? Is this common for a lionfish behaviour ? An accident or will this now be a serial killer ??

[chris-s]

Although I've never kept a lion fish or had any experience of them, I think you would be taking a big risk keeping anything with such a venoumous specimen.

I would imagine if it was 'stung' then this would be more of an accident whereby the lion fish felt threatened and raised it's spines for protection rather than all-out attack.

Chris

[Wombat]

If this happened it's almost certainly an accident or in a confrontation of some sort

I've never had a lionfish use it's spines to kill other fish in some Hannibal Lecture kind of way

JM2P

[angelfishman]

i had a similar problem about 4years ago,with a clown trigger which was stung accidental by a large lionfish.the trigger was curios about the lion fish when he got too close the lion fish stuck out its spines and accidently stuck the trigger.within 5 minutes the trigger was dead.derek

[Manta]

If there has been an 'accident' of some kind you would expect to see some form of lesions around the wound (but not in all cases). There was a recent thread on here concerning this very subject. Also lionfish on occasion will deliberately charge and impale their tankmates, although you would expect this to be less common than accidental envenomation. TBH if theres no wound of any sort then the cause of death could be very difficult to determine. Real shame, a stunning fish.

[SCOOB]

just thinking outisde the box, what did you feed it, proper marine fare or terrestrial veggies?

[dicky5ash]

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the death wasn't due to the lion. I have lost a couple of these over the years at 4"/5", they seem to get very delicate sub adult whilst they are on the change.

[Rob Martin]

Hi Col,
Just noticed your post re: Sick Radiata,if the Lionfish was injured then it's possible the Angel was picking on it & got stung in defence IMO.
Rob.