clown breathing heavy

[mrbacony]

Clownfish has white poop (indicative of a parasite), won't eat and is breathing heavy. This has been going on for a few days now. I can't get him to eat so the Metro laced food I tried to feed him will not work. So I dosed the tank with General Cure. After 2 days, he was the same. I did a 5 minute freshwater dip, but no flukes came off. I have just dosed GC for the second time and was going to give it another 48 hours before a water change. Not sure what else I can do.
Nitrate is 8, SG is 1.025 and ammonia is 0.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Clownfish has white poop (indicative of a parasite), won't eat and is breathing heavy. This has been going on for a few days now. I can't get him to eat so the Metro laced food I tried to feed him will not work. So I dosed the tank with General Cure. After 2 days, he was the same. I did a 5 minute freshwater dip, but no flukes came off. I have just dosed GC for the second time and was going to give it another 48 hours before a water change. Not sure what else I can do.
Nitrate is 8, SG is 1.025 and ammonia is 0.

The white poop is sometimes a symptom of protozoan issues, but it can also result from excess mucus in the fish's gut, or some issue with the food.

Based on the other clown breathing fine, I think you can rule out system-wide protozoan issues. Flukes would also affect both clowns. Ditto for environmental problems. So what is left? Bacterial gill disease and anemia are two options. Anemia is just a general condition, the fish needs to breathy faster because its blood isn't efficiently carrying oxygen. There aren't a lot of treatable conditions that will cause that though. If you can get a look at the fish's gill filaments - they should be dark red. If they are pink or white, the fish is anemic.

In this case, I would just stay the course with the second GC dose - fish uptake some medication from the water when they drink, and metro has limited antibacterial properties.

The other option would be to move the fish to a treatment tank and dose with an antibiotic.

Jay

 

[mrbacony]

Thanks Jay. Since I am on my second dose of GC, should I try a third dose or stop at the second dose?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I’d stop at the second dose if no improvement is seen.
Jay

 

[ChaosAquaculture]

I like prazipro for deworming. Have you tried garlic guard for eating? - kali

 

[mrbacony]

Yes, I did lace the food with Kent's garlic. He still would not eat it though. The general cure has Prazi in it along with Metro so I would think it would do something for it.

 

[gaki]

I had a very similar issue, I tried praxis pro, garlic, and metroplex but nothing worked. This spread through all my clownfish, killing all of them. I hope this is not what yours have, but it seems awful similar.