Odd behavior...please advise...

[Mouse51180]

I bought a Divided Leopard Wrasse about a week ago and he seems to be doing fine. He just does 1 thing odd every day..

He puts himself to bed between 4:30 and 5:30 everyday. When I go home for lunch he is swimming around and happy and then when I get home I get to see him for 10-15min and then in a puff of sand hes gone until the next day.

I have two worries about this:
1) If he decides to put himself to bed before I get home from work...he wont get fed.
2) I dont want to have paid all this money for a fish I can only enjoy for 15min a day.

I have never read or heard of a fish going to bed this this early before and never at the same time every day.

Can anyone give me some advise on how to get this fish stay up longer or if this is normal behavior for him. I really just dont want him to starve to death because I cant get off of work soon enough to feed him.

Thanks,
Mouse

P.S. I cant find where he is sleeping at either.

 

[Anonymous]

He may not be used to motion around the tank. They also hide when they are scared, not just tired.

Give him some time to get used to you being around the tank, and he will come out. He is probably finding enough food for now while you are not looking. Try throwing a few brineshrimp in the tank when you get home, maybe you can coax him out (they loves the shrimp).

(above based on experience with clown wrasse, no prevoius leopard experience)

 

[Anonymous]

I have read that sometimes when fish are imported, (or even brought to your home from the fish store with a different light schedule) they suffer from jet lag and it takes them a while to get used to your lighting schedule.

Every burying wrasse I have ever had (including my leopard) eventually got himself on a schedule of going to bed around an hour before lights out.

Leopard wrasses are rather shy fish initially too, and I do think that as metioned above he may just be tweaked by movement around the tank.

I am sure that as time goes on he will saty out more for you.

 

[krullulon]

i have a yellowband wrasse that hid for the first week or so whenever he'd see me... but after a few weeks he gradually got bolder and bolder and now he follows me all around the tank begging for food.

and like laurad said above, he's on a clockwork sleep schedule -- about 1 hour and 15 minutes before the last lights go out every night he zips into his burrow and becomes zombie fish. i betcha you could set your watch by it.

 

[Mouse51180]

I have gone home the past couple of days to feed him and when he is up..he doesnt seem to affraid of me. I fed him yesterday about noon..and before I left to go back to work he was hiding again and I didnt see him at all that evening after I got home.

I have tried throwing food in there to try and coax him out of sleeping, but he just doesnt seem interested or maybe like you all said he had jetlag.

The fish store had him for about 2 weeks and I have had him for almost a full week now. When he is up he is swimming around minding his buisness and when I walk by the tank he doesnt seem to mind. Ill kneel in front of my tank and he will swim right past me like im no big deal, but then I feed him and 10-20min later he is gone and I wont see him again until the next day. I didnt feed him during my lunch break today hoping he might be out when I get home this evening. I have some friends coming over I want to show him off to.

 

[krullulon]

The fish store had him for about 2 weeks and I have had him for almost a full week now. When he is up he is swimming around minding his buisness and when I walk by the tank he doesnt seem to mind. Ill kneel in front of my tank and he will swim right past me like im no big deal, but then I feed him and 10-20min later he is gone and I wont see him again until the next day. I didnt feed him during my lunch break today hoping he might be out when I get home this evening. I have some friends coming over I want to show him off to.

hmm... this behavior might be a response to the conditions of the tank he was in at your fish store -- if he's out before eating and then immediately hides, it could be a response to aggressive fish he was in the tank with at the LFS -- when they fed the tank, aggression might have been high and your fish could have grabbed food quickly and then removed himself from the fray by hiding.

you haven't even had him a week yet, so give him some time... it can take months for behavior to normalize to your tank conditions, so be patient. as long as he's eating and healthy, that's all that matters.