This happened earlier in the week, but I wasn't sure I wanted to write about it because this was a very unusual situation that left me feeling quite sad about a couple of my fishes. My 6-Line Wrasse, Dart, died because of a completely crazy situation between him and my Stripped Mandarin, Deedle.
So here's the story. I just happened to get home from Costco and I walked in to notice that the 6-Line had bit the Mandarin around the eye area. I had moved the Mandarin to the top tank a couple days before and while there was aggression from the 6-Line, the day this happened it seemed far calmer and what would normally be expected once fish get acclimated, especially since the Mandarin went from hiding in a corner to swimming around the other side of the tank near the other fish without problem. So it was a rather shocking sight to see the 6-Line attacked him. I knocked the glass since it usually was enough to scare the 6-Line away. Instead, I saw him take off across the tank, but with the Mandarin in tow.
I sort of panicked at that point and was rather aggressively hitting various spots on the tank to scare him to let go as he darted from spot to spot. I went for the net after a few seconds of this, since the 6-Line still didn't let go. As I was catching them with the net I realized it was probably more than just the 6-Line not wanting to let go, rather he was unable to even as I got both in the net. I moved them to sump and turned the light on to try to figure out what happened. The 6-Line at that time looked like it has the Mandarin's left eye in his mouth and some of the skin was stuck on his teeth. I tried to separate them with a pair of over-sized toothpicks. The kind that are like 6 inches long, but not quite chopstick size. I tried for what seemed like a long 5 minutes before I called in my father outside.
At this point I had my father hold the net while I tried to be more surgical in separating them. Over the next long 15min or so we tried different angles and approaches but it basically all involved the net partially submerged with the two fish inside and me trying to peel the skin off the 6-Line's teeth or unhook him somehow. The Mandarin's skin was twisted in such a way that it looked like the Mandarin's eye was in the 6-Line somewhere. It looked like only a tiny bit of skin was attached in the 6-Line's mouth so we decided to cut them apart rather than pry. Eventually I got the scissors placed between them but I couldn't get enough pressure to split them. Something hard was in the way, be it the Mandarin's eye socket or the wrasse's mouth. My father decided he would do the last cut since it seemed like I didn't have the nerve to apply enough pressure.
What happened next still puzzles me. My dad after listening to me guide him into what to do, made the final cut, but the 6-Line appeared to instantly die. We were both in shock, because it seemed like a clean cut. The Mandarin lost some skin but was able to swim free after I let the net go. The 6-Line on the other hand looked like his mouth area was intact without damage but didn't make it somehow. The only real explanation would be the stress or shock or what happened to it. I won't pretend to really know what happened since I don't know how the 6-Line even got stuck to the Mandarin to start with. He bites but I've never seen teeth that could hook flesh and not be able to cut through it. Either way, I'm sure the wrasse never intended to bite and get stuck when he decided to attack, but that's what happened. That wrasse was very aggressive and it used to live in the display tank outside but it was way too aggressive even for his smaller size and after keeping it in quarantine for a while, I put him in my propagation tank when I first set it up. I was thinking about giving him away because of his aggression but that's too late now.
The Mandarin on the other hand has a good bit of the back of his eye socket area damaged. Looked mostly like skin damage. Once the mandarin was freed, I noticed that his eye slowly appeared again, it looked like it was stretched in a way that the skin was pulled over it during the attack. He was unable to move his left eye for a couple days and had some difficulty aiming for food but lately he's starting to get motion back as the skin on the area is healing and the open white areas of flesh are closing up. I'll see what happens the next few days. The whole ordeal was rather sad and it didn't sit well with me for a while, but I don't know what would happen if I left them in the tank like that.
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