Smoking?! mandarin

[kawicivic]

my mandarin just puffed what appeared to be smoke out of his fins. At first I thought a stomatella was spraying him (looked just like when the stomatella shoots sperm into the water column). Then I realized it was spraying out right about his pectoral? fins.

any idea what is going on?

Was he just passing stuff/detritus through his system? or is this some sort of reproductive behavior?

[PJSEA]

That's the fish eating. I think the inedible portions of what they gulp in pass thru and you see this as a puff of "smoke"

[kawicivic]

lol

i wondered if that was what it was but it was too cool to just wonder

[adtravels]

good to watch and a great way to get detritus back into the water column

[Deyoe1118]

really neat to watch...love seeing it under actinics only too

[Fairy Wrassler]

Mine do this too. It doesn't look like they have the stuff to bite rock and spray smoke, but they do....

I used to have an anampses wrasse that picked the rock non-stop. leaving little explosions all over the place. I named him Jack after Gelignite Jack Murray, a rally driver here in Australia in the 50's who was famous for throwing sticks of gelignite out of his car and blowing stuff up all over the outback.

On topic? Praps.....


FW

[snorvich]

What brand is he smoking? All of mine do the same thing. Funny to watch.