Death of a Lawn Mower Blenny due to grief?

[Shagon]

So my mandarin dragonet died the other night. Dont know why, he was eating well and was healthy.

But to the real story. When I came home the other day, the wife told me the mandarin was dead. She also said that the blenny had not left the mandarin side. After I removed the mandarin the blenny just laid around. This morning, he was dead as well. The blenny was always by the mandarins side when they were alive.

I think this was a case of the blenny dieing due to grief. What do you guys think? Am I being to tree huger here?

 

[PIMPALA]

Maybe he caught fish herpes from him (or some other kind of STD).

 

[jpsika08]

Sorry to hear about this.
The last issue of Coral Magazine has a great and complete article on Dragonets.

The editor of the article made reference on many cases in which after a Mandarin died other fish did too.
This was possible (Not proven) that these fish release a small toxin when dead that could kill other fish.

If you have by any chance an Ipad or Ipod, you can look for the Coral Magazine App which gives the magazine for free, try downloading the lastest issue and check out that article, it's a wealth of information there.

Good luck and sorry for the loss.

 

[BigAl07]

Ditto to Juan. That was a very good article and that's exactly what I thought when I read this thread.

I'd run some heavy carbon and maybe consider a water change because it could be a water parameter out of whack causing the issue or something totally unrelated. Test to be safe.