Is this longhorn cowfish poisoning my triggerfish?

[gernby]

The video says it all, so it would be a waste of time to type (or read) the whole story. In short ... It seems that my cowfish might be giving my trigger daily doses of toxins to kill him slowly. I've never seen a fish die so slowly while also seeming physically healthy.

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[Sweeper13]

Found this on Liveaquaria.

Similar to other boxfish, the Cowfish Longhorn's skin is poisonous and, when threatened, it will release a toxin lethal to other tank members, including other Longhorns.

How are the other fish? The trigger could be getting stressed out. I had a Niger trigger doing fine and then just go the other way when I put a porc puffer in the tank. I would move Blue cheese to another tank, if not you may lose all, if it is poison GL

[Dmorty217]

If the trigger is nipping at the cowfish then it's a possiblity. I notice one of the horns is missing too. For the record I had one die while in QT in a 40g with 4 other fish and all the others weren't effected

[humaguy]

No, that is not happening.:dance:

What size is that tank?
You have a fairly large sized Rhinecanthus assasi, that, in your video, seems to be acting like a trigger does. Except, he seems quite frustrated and I would bet that is due to tank size.

http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatfishblog/2008/02/21/species-profile-long-horn-cowfish/#.WmTrXGCWzIU

https://naturespoisons.com/2015/08/13/cowfish-the-mutant-superheroes-of-the-ocean-pahutoxin/

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1552239

There is plenty of solid info around out there.

Good luck,

TK

[Pslreefer]

Looks like tank size and water quality issues to me


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[lagatbezan]

I'm not an expert but my guess would be that if the cowfish is releasing toxins, wouldn't it effect other fish in the tank as well and not just the one fish? are you running carbon in the tank? Hopefully that can take the toxins out of the system maybe?
was the new fish qt before adding it to the tank? if not its possible that maybe some parasite was brought in like flukes or ich.

[McPuff]

The trigger's behavior seems pretty normal given the circumstances. That said, I would take the trigger out of the tank and either trade it in or sell it to another aquarist. It's too big for the tank and those guys like to swim. Assasi triggers are not super common so I doubt you'll have much trouble finding a new home for him.

[gernby]

Thanks for all of the replies! I apologize for not posting back for so long.

It took 9 days for him to die, and it was painful to watch. I agree with many posts above that it was probably due to tank size. It is a 90 gallon bow front, which I thought would be sufficient for a fish his size. He was probably the "heaviest" fish I've ever had, due to his thickness, but his height and length wasn't any bigger than several Tangs I had in a 105 gallon reef. Anyway, I should have done more research about Triggers before buying him. I've had reef tanks for about 20 years, but this is my first "fish only" tank (sitting next to a 180 gallon extreme bowfront reef).

The cowfish, liofish, and snowflake eel seem to be doing fine, but I did have a really bad outbreak of ich after the trigger. I wound up separating the 2 aquariums, which had been sharing a sump, so that I could run copper. The ich outbreak wound up taking out a couple of the fish in my reef also, and almost killed my oldest Tang (I've had it for 13 years). Thankfully, after separating the tanks, raising the water temp from ~72 deg F to ~80 deg F, and adding 3 cleaner shrimp, the reef fish all seem virtually ich-free.