Clownfish with white blotch

tcoyle · Nov 2, 2016

So the past few days I have noticed my clown with a white blotch on his tail area. It looks like she has scraped herself on some live rock near the Anemone she is trying to go in. But wanted to see if anyone has any other ideas. She seems healthy and acting normal, but it does seem to be getting bigger in size.

melypr1985 · Nov 2, 2016

Are you talking about that pink area right before the last white stripe?

tcoyle · Nov 2, 2016

Yea. Hard to get it look right with my iPhone.

tcoyle · Nov 2, 2016

Better pic from a day or so ago.

melypr1985 · Nov 2, 2016

Could be a scrape. It getting bigger worries me though. Any other symptoms to go with it? Heavy breathing, lack of appetite, Flashing/scratching on the rocks or sand? head twitching? Things like that?

tcoyle · Nov 2, 2016

No that's the odd thing. She is acting normal and eating well. Both clowns have been on and out of the anemone. This was my first fish I got 3 years ago. Last fish was added 4 months ago and QT treated with prazi pro and copper.

She does spend most of her time in that spot in the 2nd picture.

melypr1985 · Nov 2, 2016

For now I would recommend vitamins (something like selcon or vitachem) in the food. If you're only feeding pellets, I would advise a frozen option like mysis, Rods or LRS coupled with the vitamins. Keep clean, pristine water and stress to a minimum and let's hope she can kick it on her own. If it starts getting worse instead of better, or other symptoms start up let us know asap. You could go ahead and start an antibiotic in the food like kanaplex + focus since it's already getting larger. Even better would be to QT and dose the med in the water.

Humblefish · Nov 2, 2016

^^ Agree

tcoyle · Nov 28, 2016

Is metroplex and focus ok to use to treat this as well? She keeps getting this white blotch and has white stringy poo.

Humblefish · Nov 28, 2016

tcoyle said:
Is metroplex and focus ok to use to treat this as well? She keeps getting this white blotch and has white stringy poo.

White stringy poo is a symptom of intestinal worms, so food soaking Metroplex (using Focus as the binder) is what you want to do in this situation.

tcoyle · Nov 28, 2016

sounds good.. I am assuming that feeding metroplex and focus to all my fish won't hurt anything?

Humblefish · Nov 28, 2016

tcoyle said:
sounds good.. I am assuming that feeding metroplex and focus to all my fish won't hurt anything?

I've never had any issues doing it with corals/inverts; however running a little carbon just in case some of the metro leached out wouldn't hurt.

tcoyle · Nov 28, 2016

Great. I run carbon 24/7. So feed every day for 10 days?

Humblefish · Nov 28, 2016

tcoyle said:
Great. I run carbon 24/7. So feed every day for 10 days?

You sometimes have to feed for 2-3 weeks to clear intestinal worms. They can be tough little SOBs.

melypr1985 · Nov 28, 2016

yeah most likely it will take longer than 10 days to complete

tcoyle · Nov 28, 2016

So if the white patches happen to be brook, will metro be effective dosed this way? Or is a bath the only way to treat.

If a bath, what is the dosage of metro to treat?

melypr1985 · Nov 28, 2016

tcoyle said:
So if the white patches happen to be brook, will metro be effective dosed this way? Or is a bath the only way to treat.

If a bath, what is the dosage of metro to treat?

I've never fed metro to a fish with brook. I would say that it wont be effective since brook tends to kill very quickly and feeding the meds can take quite a while to take effect. Follow the dosing directions on the package when dosing the QT.

tcoyle · Nov 28, 2016

So if she has had these spots for a month or so, would you tend to not think Brook?

melypr1985 · Nov 28, 2016

tcoyle said:
So if she has had these spots for a month or so, would you tend to not think Brook?

Either that or one strong clownfish. It's been known to happen where fish develop a temporary immunity to these things.... even velvet and brook and become carriers for a while, infecting new fish and so on. It could take a couple weeks to clear them up, but usually you see improvement in about a week to 10 days.

tcoyle · Nov 28, 2016

I'll try to get pictures tomorrow again. It seems to get better and then develops on another spot of the fish. Which led me to believe it was from hitting the rocks or something.

She likes to hide under the anemone and swim back and forth and it looked like scratches more then sloughing of skin. But I'm not 100% at this point.