Dirge had been acting shy for quite a while. When the sorority was first set up, she kept to the corners and would stay near the bottom, or in hiding in her moonrock, or hiding out behind the breeder trap where Starscream was being kept in a last ditch effort to socialize her, and I worried she was being bullied by the other girls so I took her out and put her by herself in one of my qt tanks with a little touch of aquarium salt and stress coat in the hopes it would calm her down and make her feel better. She perked up a little but she was still sulking around the bottom of the bowl, but she was eating fine and swimming around at times so I didn't think too much of it. My QT tanks are pretty bare, I figured she was bored.
When I started moving girls to the 20 gal, I added her back to the group, and she went right behind the breeder net and stayed there. Since my smaller bowls were being used by my new girl and Starscream until I can get the 10 gal set up again, I put her into the breeder yesterday to keep the other girls from bullying her because I thought that was what was still going on. She was eating fine until this evening when I came home for lunch to feed the girls. She was laying on the bottom of the net on her side, all gray and black. No signs of rot or ick or velvet or anything that I could find, though her tummy seemed a little big. I'm suspecting parasites or something or maybe she was just sick... I don't know...
I feel bad for not doing more, for being oblivious, thinking it was just stress of moving tanks and the other girls... I should have done more to try to help her, and next time I'll know better... but still... sorry, Dirge...
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