Bullied fish gets a prosthetic eye

A Moon wrasse living in a marine tank in the U.S. has been given a false eye after developing a cataract.

Tank mates had begun picking on the seven-year-old fish, called Kiwi, says owner Julie Morgan.

"They figured out which eye was not working. They’d go up behind him, biting his tail. He had chunks of his tail taken out."

Dr. Megan Baebler of Kersting Veterinary Hospital in Chesterfield, Missouri, removed the cataract and eventually the eye — and then came up with the idea of giving Kiwi a false one. She hand-painted the 9mm acrylic eye herself to give it some iridescence and then perfomed a 30-minute operation on the fish to insert and sew the replacement eye in place.

Kiwi is currently swimming around in a quarantine aquarium before being reunited with his tank mates, but is reported to be swimming about and eating normally.