Clownfish surface gasping

[Aparker2005]

Hey guys. One of our clowns today has taken a really bad turn it seems. Trying to save it!

I've noticed this afternoon and now, it's mostly staying at the surface and what looks like gasping for air. It will swim with the other clown for a bit and go right back to this. It's been perfectly fine since we got it 2 months ago.

It ate like normal this evening. All other fish corals, and inverts are acting fine. Parameters are:

Temp - 78
Salinity - 1.024
Ph - 8
Ammomia - looks like between 0 and 0.25 using api kit. I know these are notorious for giving false positives. My freshwater tank is pure 0 however.
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - between 5 and 10
Last Water change was yesterday
Seachem tidal filter and WaveMaker are moving lots of water on the surface


Any advice? I figured if it's still doing this in the morning I'd do a water change and see if that helps.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Fish looks very thin and may have developed either an internal infection or swim bladder issue
Has fish been eating at all?

 

[Aparker2005]

Fish looks very thin and may have developed either an internal infection or swim bladder issue
Has fish been eating at all?

Yeah it's been eating just fine and has put on size since we got it. She's swimming perfectly normal now, with much less of this behavior going on. She ate some flakes and pellets today like nothing was wrong.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Yeah it's been eating just fine and has put on size since we got it. She's swimming perfectly normal now, with much less of this behavior going on. She ate some flakes and pellets today like nothing was wrong.

May have then been swim bladder. Add to its diet:
LRS fish frenzy
Spirulina brine shrimp
Small plankton
Spectrum pellets
Mysis flakes

add garlic extract to the foods for stamina and immunity health

 

[Aparker2005]

Still alive this morning. On her side asleep with the male like normal

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Try and get some seafood. Fine chop and freeze it. Or pe mysis.
Cute clowns.
D

 

[ariellemermaid]

Just relating my own experience as a 1 year Reefer. My first 2 clowns were doing similar things; they’d swim near the top, on their side sometimes, then right themselves and look fine for a while. We chalked it up to clown behavior. They were dead within 24 hours along with a Dottyback. In our case it was definitely ammonia and the highest we measured was like 0.25 with API.

My advice and what I’d do: add Seachem Prime (or Amsorb, or a similar product) immediately and every 2 days until the test is solid yellow. There is absolutely no harm in doing so, but a chance that it could be the ammonia so there’s nothing to lose. Then, look into everything else mentioned here. The test could be a false positive but I’ve tested obsessively with the API kit enough that I trust it. I QT all my fish and can reliably track the cycling each time the tank is restarted with the kit. It goes a little green, then over a week or two goes completely yellow. I just wouldn’t ignore that completely when the treatment carries no risk.

Also for future reference, there’s a forum called Fish Disease and Treatment or something like that; that’s the best place to post things like this and is tracked by Jay, the reef2reef resident fish disease expert. Good luck!

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Do a small wc
D

 

[betterunderwater]

Yeah it's been eating just fine and has put on size since we got it. She's swimming perfectly normal now, with much less of this behavior going on. She ate some flakes and pellets today like nothing was wrong.

I know it's been a while but my clownfish has the exact same symptoms with the exact same water parameters:

Temp - 78
Salinity - 1.025
Ph - 8
Ammomia - looks like between 0 and 0.25 using api kit. I know these are notorious for giving false positives. My freshwater tank is pure 0 however.
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - between 5 and 10
Last Water change was 1 week ago @ 20%.
I have the stock AIO pump agitating the surface and last night I put an air stone in for extra aeration.

Did your fish survive? Any ideas what it could have been?