A One-eyed Buenos Aires Tetra

[evilannabelle]

So...I took one for the team....poor little guy was missing an eye, so I decided to add him to my tank at home (figured that no one would want to buy the lil guy with only one eye). He looks perfectly healthy otherwise...no pus/blood from the socket...
Is there any chance of the Buenos Aires Tetra posing a threat of anything to his new tank mates (infection or something...)? Will they pick at him due to his obvious misfortune?
:-D I just felt bad for him.......

 

[punkrockfish]

really depends on how he lost the eye and if it is infected. if it just got attacked by another fish and healed up then i dont see a problem. other fish picking on him depends on the other fish you have. if the fish lost the eye due to disease then yeah i would be worried. probably isnt the best thing to buy a fish (did you get it at a good lfs?) that could potentially bring disease to the tank, hence why most people buy fish without things such as missing eyes. a QT tank would be wonderful if you have one, but i would keep really close observation of the fish and of your other fish for the time being, and then medicate or remove the fish if you see a problem.

 

[Stevie]

My bro bought me one cherry barb,a few years back. I did not think it would last a week on its own in the tank,with all those bigger fish,and when I saw it only had one eye that estamation (spl?) went down to 1 day. I did not have the heart to tell my brother I had to bring it back to the lfs or put it down. I was just going to let nature take its course.

Well the cherry barb,or jimmy,as he was called live for 1 and a half years. Jimmy was an antichrist,he domananted (spl?) his "zone",a little bit of drift wood at the side of the tank,attacking any fish that came near him.

Then one day he just died,I dont know why.

 

[CAPSLOCK]

He should do fine, as long as you don't have particularly aggressive fish with him. If you have other buenos aires tetras, he'll school with them when he's threatened. He might hang out alone otherwise. This is how my one-eyed black neon acts with the rest of my black neon school. He'll probably stay the smallest in the school (mine is). My one-eyed tetra seems to stay out of the school normally because they have a pecking order amongst themselves, and he's clearly at the bottom. But they don't chase him or anything, and no one else in the tank pays any attention to him.

I don't think there are any communicable diseases among tetras that result in the loss of an eye, without any other visible damage. He probably got attacked by another fish a while ago (if it was really recent, he'd be bleeding). If he were really susceptable to infection, he'd probably have ich already... so I'd say he was safe to add to your tank.

 

[ashleigh]

I've had a one eyed serpae for about a year and a half now, I woudln't worry about him. Everybody is right, you do need to be careful to quarantine if you buy something specifically because it is not healthy, but fish seem to lose eyes fairly frequently, he's okay.