Clownfish sick?

Question

i have a 75 gallon saltwater tank with 2 percula clownfish and a yellow tang. the yellow tang and 1 clownfish seem perfectly fine, but one of my clownfish seems sick and i'm not sure what is wrong. it isn't really swimming around, just staying in the same spot, it has a few white spots, and its fins are frayed at the edges. its still eating like normal. it seems like it is breathing heavy. the water tests fine. everything else in the tank is fine. any ideas what could be wrong?

Answer 1

It is often called clownfish disease (a ciliated protozoan parasite named Brooklynella hostilis ) and it will kill the fish (not just the clowns either.)  There are a variety of ways to treat it.  Malachite green, malachite green and formalin (Quickcure for example), hyposalinity and copper (I wouldn't recommend copper myself.)  It is possible that it is cryptocaryon as well but from your description sounds more like brooklynella.  It doesn't matter anyway, the same treatments will kill both.

Answer 2

change max,30% of your water every two days for a week.the white spot will reduce after the 1st week.

Answer 3

The white spots are either marine ich which is called Cryptocarayon irritans or it could be marine velvet. Also, you may want to consider clownfish disease. Either or, this must be treated or your clownfish will die.

The frayed fins seems to be called fin rot. Fin rot occurs when the clownfish has been picked on or due to the water parameters. Even though the water tests fine, there could be something else in the water that you don't know of.

When did you get the fish? Do you keep a quarantine tank? Did you mix the water from the pet store with your display tank? How aggressive is your other fish? These can play big roles into keeping a saltwater aquarium. You need to know that marine ich has different strains, which some strains are very immune to some types of treatments.

Anyways, if you do have live rocks and invertebrates, you must get another tank to treat your fish, otherwise your live rocks and invertebrates will die for treatments.

Here's some methods that you can use:

1) Hyposalinity- reducing the salinity of the water to 1.010 - 1.009 over a three day period slowly drop the salinity, otherwise, you'll stress the fish a lot and it can be very fatal.

2) Use of chemicals- Formalin, Formaldehyde, or Copper sulfate. Whatever you do, DO NOT MIX any of these chemicals together, whatsoever. You should only stick to one. I prefer copper sulfate. Just remember that these chemicals is extremely toxic to fish and to you as well, you must use care when using these chemicals as a treatment method.

3) UV sterilizer - this is only good for free floating marine ich, not the ich that is attached to the fish. But it will also help in reducing algae blooms in your tank. So this equipment is ok to have, but not necessarily needed.

4) Diatom filters - you can use a Vortex Diatom filter, but once again, it'll only filter out what's free floating in the water and not on the fish.

5) Garlic enriched flakes or pellets, these are very good, I have success with these foods, what the garlic does is it helps boost the fishes immune system to help fight off these parasites.

6) Using an aquarium heater- What people don't understand about heating the water, it only speeds up the life cycle of the ich and not kill it. When the life cycle speeds up, the ich tends to fall off of the fish and then it will mass reproduce which will cause a bad infestation of your fish tank, it is very important that if you try to use this method with treating with chemicals, you must treat the tank as soon as the marine ich falls off of the fish. Otherwise, this is a really ineffective method.

7) Finally, I want to make my last note of this, the reason for treating the fishes in a quarantine tank is because if you have free floating ich in your tank, and you treat your fishes in quarantine, the free floating ich in the display tank will not have a host to feed off of, and within 30 days, they'll all die because of starvation. So don't forget to treat your fishes for 30 days.

Marine ich is the size of grain of salt. There is a new strain of ich that can kill your fish within 24-48 hours. I will provide a web page that you can read up on. http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/ichpara...

Anyways, Good luck and I hope that this information has helped, any other questions, please feel free to email or ask me through IM.

Answer 4

Well, I'm not positive, but the white spots on a freshwater fish indicate Ick.

I'm not sure if saltwater fish can get Ick...perhaps someone else can say for sure.

If it is Ick, it's easily treatable (if done quickly) with a drop-in tablet.  It's fatal and quick spreading, though.

Hope this helps...