Is this hole in the head?

shoshowhy · Mar 9, 2022

When I got my black clown in Sept she had a lumpy white band around her head and I treated her with prazipro and ridich plus. Since then it seems to have gotten worse. See video and pic for more. I've had her and my orange clown the longest and none of the other fish seem to be affected. She's always been a little slow and shy.

The biggest stressor recently (2 weeks ago) was adding a neon dottyback that was too aggressive and I removed him a coupled days later. I also added 2 skunk cleaners 2 days ago.

Please help, what should I do?

MnFish1 · Mar 9, 2022

Is it only on one side? When you say its getting worse - how? What are you feeding - are you using carbon (activated?)? Other parameters ok?

While its possible for clowns to have HLLE, its less common. At least one side looks like recovery from an injury. The way you described how the clown looked 'at first' to me does not sound like HLLE. Hopefully others will weigh in. @Jay Hemdal @nereefpat @fishguy242

Sharkbait19 · Mar 9, 2022

Like mentioned, hlle isn’t too common in clowns so I’m not too sure this is it.
Were new fish quarantined?

nereefpat · Mar 9, 2022

It looks more like an injury to me. If the fish is eating, I would just observe for now. Keep us posted.

fishguy242 · Mar 9, 2022

Jay Hemdal · Mar 9, 2022

shoshowhy said:
When I got my black clown in Sept she had a lumpy white band around her head and I treated her with prazipro and ridich plus. Since then it seems to have gotten worse. See video and pic for more. I've had her and my orange clown the longest and none of the other fish seem to be affected. She's always been a little slow and shy.

The biggest stressor recently (2 weeks ago) was adding a neon dottyback that was too aggressive and I removed him a coupled days later. I also added 2 skunk cleaners 2 days ago.

Please help, what should I do?

I don't see anything that you should rush to treat for here.

While damselfish sometimes develop HLLE, it is really pretty rare in clownfish (despite them being in the same family of fish).

The other clown looks pretty good, so that helps rule out contagious diseases that would be expected to infect both fish more of less equally.

One thing about dark clownfish is that they tend to show mucus more readily than lighter colored clowns. You can see this clearly in your pictures where this clown has distinctly cloudy skin on the black areas, but that is not visible on the white portions.

Jay