Clownfish barely trying to eat

[Chortanator]

I purchased a black storm last week from my LFS. I feed my tank a mix of mysis/spirulina brine/mini vitalis pellets. I noticed the fish only makes a half-hearted attempt to hunt for food, and will spit it out sometimes and lose interest in it altogether after doing so. It seems more interested in pellets than frozen, but still spits them out. He has a bit of a belly and does seem to be eating, but it mostly looks like it's floating vitachem particulates that it can tolerate the most. It's a very small clown, about an inch, and I was thinking maybe it was having a hard time fitting things into its mouth? But I have another black storm of a similar size that's fat as anything.

 

[Chortanator]

I should add: the clown is very energetic otherwise, no symptoms of anything else. And it's not that it's not eating at all, it just won't eat as much as the other

 

[ScubaFish802]

Does the other guard the food possibly? The female clownfish in my tank has the male one pretty well trained to stay away until it has gotten some food first. I usually feed different pellets like Saki Hakari marine, but when I feed mysis I do see the clownfish spit out the pieces that are not to their taste for whatever reason.

 

[Harold999]

Clowns that don't eat (well) might have intestinal problems, like worms or a bacterial infection.
I wouldn't wait till it gets worse, consider Api General Cure.

 

[Chortanator]

Does the other guard the food possibly? The female clownfish in my tank has the male one pretty well trained to stay away until it has gotten some food first. I usually feed different pellets like Saki Hakari marine, but when I feed mysis I do see the clownfish spit out the pieces that are not to their taste for whatever reason.

They're both asexual at the moment, still establishing dominance, but from what I can tell the other one that eats more will give this one nudges during feeding time, and race to get the food first. Still, it has plenty of time to get food on its own, but it may want the more dominant one to eat first. Since the spirulina brine clumps a little, i picked it up with some aquascaping tweezers so that the clown wouldn't have to chase food, and this worked really well yesterday, but it almost seemed scared of the tweezers today despite all the other fish coming to pick off of it

 

[Chortanator]

Clowns that don't eat (well) might have intestinal problems, like worms or a bacterial infection.
I wouldn't wait till it gets worse, consider Api General Cure.

I have Fritz ParaCleanse, would that work?

 

[Harold999]

I have Fritz ParaCleanse, would that work?

Looks the same to me as API General so yes (active ingredients for both are metronidazole and praziquantel).
A seperate hospital tank is a must though.

How do it's faeces look? If these are normal then there shouldn't be a problem intestinal.

 

[Chortanator]

Looks the same to me as API General so yes (active ingredients for both are metronidazole and praziquantel).
A seperate hospital tank is a must though.

How do it's faeces look? If these are normal then there shouldn't be a problem intestinal.

It looks completely normal, I've been watching to make sure there's no white stringy poop and have been cutting back on mysis to prevent false positives.