Seems normal enough, about half my fish sleep in rocks the other half sleep in the sand, or just swim all night. All depends on the fish. Someone may have taken his spot that night.
Turkey Trigger!
So things have been pretty stable/quiet in the tank for the last several weeks, and everything looks like it is doing great, growing, healthy, etc.
But last night I came home late from work to find our poor cute little Niger Trigger "crashed" down in a rear corner of the tank in a pile of empty shells on the substrate, clearly visible in the light from the flashlight that we use to "spy" on the tank when the lights are off in the hood.
There's no other way to put it...he looked deader'n a doornail---extremely pale, practically translucent, seemingly no gill, eye, or fin movement, and his little body gently rocking in the current from a nearby powerhead, tail flaccid.
I couldn't believe it--never any hint of trouble with him or anything else in the tank, for that matter. I went to wake my wife and tell her the news, and she came out to see him and between sniffles and "aww's" she kept asking what happened....as if I would know since I'd been at work all day. The Coral Banded shrimp was hovering nearby, seemingly ready to embark on some serious scavenging.
Just as I was getting ready to scoop him out after about 10 minutes of watching, wondering, and tapping, though, my wife said "Wait! He's trying to move!"
Sure enough, he seemed to be quite feebly twitching and gasping.....and then he "managed" to kind of drift around a bit...and then Voila! he was back to usual form, color, and animation level. Presumably, he was just fast asleep...or epileptic, or what?!
Now, from time to time we've "caught" our various fish napping/sleeping when the lights have been off for a while and the room totally dark, but always propped up/wedged into rock crevices, never out in the open like this episode, and certainly never looking outright "dead."
And when it comes to the trigger, we've witnessed many an amusing and/or puzzling antic, including some downright silly "opossum playing" where he sticks his head into crevices and seems to just hang there like a kid faking dead on the playground...but never anything like last night's episode where he looked for all the world like a ...well... a dead fish on the rocks.
I presume that this is normal sleeping behavior for fish in general, and triggers in particular? He's healthy as a horse, and almost as big (compared to when we got him, anyway). Anybody else have similar experiences with their triggers or other fish when the lights are out? I haven't checked the water yet (back at work even now), but suffice it to say that everything/everyone else in the tank looks great today.
Scared the heck out of us for a bit there, I can tell you!
But last night I came home late from work to find our poor cute little Niger Trigger "crashed" down in a rear corner of the tank in a pile of empty shells on the substrate, clearly visible in the light from the flashlight that we use to "spy" on the tank when the lights are off in the hood.
There's no other way to put it...he looked deader'n a doornail---extremely pale, practically translucent, seemingly no gill, eye, or fin movement, and his little body gently rocking in the current from a nearby powerhead, tail flaccid.
I couldn't believe it--never any hint of trouble with him or anything else in the tank, for that matter. I went to wake my wife and tell her the news, and she came out to see him and between sniffles and "aww's" she kept asking what happened....as if I would know since I'd been at work all day. The Coral Banded shrimp was hovering nearby, seemingly ready to embark on some serious scavenging.
Just as I was getting ready to scoop him out after about 10 minutes of watching, wondering, and tapping, though, my wife said "Wait! He's trying to move!"
Sure enough, he seemed to be quite feebly twitching and gasping.....and then he "managed" to kind of drift around a bit...and then Voila! he was back to usual form, color, and animation level. Presumably, he was just fast asleep...or epileptic, or what?!
Now, from time to time we've "caught" our various fish napping/sleeping when the lights have been off for a while and the room totally dark, but always propped up/wedged into rock crevices, never out in the open like this episode, and certainly never looking outright "dead."
And when it comes to the trigger, we've witnessed many an amusing and/or puzzling antic, including some downright silly "opossum playing" where he sticks his head into crevices and seems to just hang there like a kid faking dead on the playground...but never anything like last night's episode where he looked for all the world like a ...well... a dead fish on the rocks.
I presume that this is normal sleeping behavior for fish in general, and triggers in particular? He's healthy as a horse, and almost as big (compared to when we got him, anyway). Anybody else have similar experiences with their triggers or other fish when the lights are out? I haven't checked the water yet (back at work even now), but suffice it to say that everything/everyone else in the tank looks great today.
Scared the heck out of us for a bit there, I can tell you!
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