blue throat trigger strange behaviour

[Gregs]

recently introduced a blue throat trigger to my display tank about a week ago. first day quite shy, second day he was out and about and eating. this went on for a few days. now ive noticed day 6,7,8 hes been missing. found him wedged in a cave, so i thought maybe he was stuck. i removed all the rock and then he just swam out and into another cave and wedged himself into there. his color is fine, breathing ok, no noticable wounds or diseases, not sure what the problem might be?
anyone else noticed this sort of behaviour with the blue throat trigger?
Other fish are fine in the tank. parimeters are good.

[gregzz4]

Maybe a list of full tank params, fishes list and corals will get you a better answer ?

[fishytime]

and a list of suspects(tank-mates)......triggers from the Xanthichthys family can sometimes be tricky to introduce.....some are really timid and easily harassed.....once they make it past that initial nervousness they become a lot more bold

[Gregs]

Hmm.. well tank parameters are stable and accurate for him but maybe im wrong:
Temp: 76f
salt: 1.025
nitrate: less than 10
ammonia: 0

tank is 220 fish only with live rock
-1 longnose butterfly
-1 small naso tang
-1 seagrass wrasse
-1 crimson starfish

I can see how these guys are quite timid so id understand if hes shy of new surroundings but it stumps me since he has came out many times into the open water and ate plenty of servings earlier... ? ive attached a photo of how hes been sitting for going on 3 days now.

[windcoast reefs]

From my experience that doesn't really seem that strange to me, I know that triggers do have a tendency to do that in the wild and that makes it very difficult and traumatic to capture. All the triggers I've seen come into Victoria seem to do that same thing and very rarely come out of hiding while in the store. A few of us have maybe though it might have something to do with the possible use of cyanide to capture them which messes with there body functions. But that's just what I've seen! I hope he come out and gets some food! They are a gorgeous fish.

[gregzz4]

Was he/she by chance wild-caught ?
Such a beautiful fish ... hope it works out for you both

[MMAX]

Probably nothing to worry about. My blue throat does the same thing, squeezes himself behind my rock structure but always knows how to get out. As soon as the lights are out he's gone into his tucked away cave to sleep.

[Gregs]

hmm alrighty. wierd. ill keep an eye on him and track his eating record. im kind of relieved some of you others are reporting a level of normality here, as you know these guys arent the cheapest of fish so my stress levels are a little on the higher side haha.

[Aquattro]

Was he/she by chance wild-caught ?


Pretty sure that's the only option for these.

[subman]

Yeah pretty normal mine would do that when ever I went away for a week or longer, when Id get home he would hide like that for a couple days.

[Gregs]

upon closer inspection today it appears that he is quite bloated ?? i havent seen him eat for a few days so im starting to think its bacterial? ? i did a 6.5 minute fresh dip when i introduced him to the tank over a week ago. he was eating the next day if that makes any difference... ???

[daniella3d]

My niger trigger has been doing this for nearly 2 years now. He is hiding in his cave all day long, only coming out for feeding and then returning to his cave. Once in a while he comes out, have a little swim around and back into his cave. That's it, that's his life.

I have absolutely no aggressive fish in my tank, a cleaner wrasse, copperband butterfly, a few cardinal, 2 occelaris clownfish and 2 mandarins. No aggressive fish at all. I never understood why he was so shy, as he never was attacked by anything.

[Gregs]

died.. wierd??

[gregzz4]

Sorry to hear that
Sucks when ya don't know what happened