Male clownfish breathing hard

iamahab · Mar 3, 2022

My male clownfish has been laying in the same spot on a rock for a day n a half while breathing heavy.It normally chills there during the night but has taken to hanging out there all day. It's the rapid breathing that has me worried. I'm hoping he's protecting eggs but that wouldn't explain the heavy breathing.I'd post a video but I've never had good luck with that. He is still eating and will move around every once in awhile. The other fish and inverts seem happy and healthy.Has anyone seen this before?
API
Nitrates 0-5.0 (hard to tell with api)
Ammonia 0
Ph 8.0
Nitrites 0
Hanna testers
ca.l 529
alk. 149
mag. 1320
phos. 0.05

MartysReef · Mar 3, 2022

I recently had a clown pass on me and I have no idea why, maybe check your equipment and temps as well? Sometimes they just don't make it but keep and eye on him, check the gills and check salinity? Maybe add some carbon if you don't have any in there, depends on if you have other agressive or semi agressive fish that gave him a hit. Number of issues can come from this

iamahab · Mar 3, 2022

MartysReef said:
I recently had a clown pass on me and I have no idea why, maybe check your equipment and temps as well? Sometimes they just don't make it but keep and eye on him, check the gills and check salinity? Maybe add some carbon if you don't have any in there, depends on if you have other agressive or semi agressive fish that gave him a hit. Number of issues can come from this

His female partner is the most aggressive clown i've seen but he looks ok. Salinity is on point but I do have a cyano outbreak. I'm wondering if that my be the cause.I just tried feeding him and he seemed interested but didn't eat.

LxHowler · Mar 3, 2022

I had a male clownfish do something similar to this before, he didnt really bond with the female even though they were sold as a bonded pair and she kept nipping at him but she kept going at his side around the gills i think that made it harder for him to breath with damaged gills.
i had to seperate them in the end, put him into a breeding box to recover, sadly i was too late.
Is the female aggresive towards him if he moves out of that spot, does he look to have any damage on him?

MartysReef · Mar 3, 2022

iamahab said:
His female partner is the most aggressive clown i've seen but he looks ok. Salinity is on point but I do have a cyano outbreak. I'm wondering if that my be the cause.I just tried feeding him and he seemed interested but didn't eat.

Females are the ones that wear the pants in the relationship, how long have you had them and are they already a pair or are you attempting to make them a pair? They can be fighting each other in some cases. I have heard of cyano being toxic to some fish so I would deff get in there and siphon that cyano out of there wherever you see it and get it off there as well.

iamahab · Mar 3, 2022

LxHowler said:
I had a male clownfish do something similar to this before, he didnt really bond with the female even though they were sold as a bonded pair and she kept nipping at him but she kept going at his side around the gills i think that made it harder for him to breath with damaged gills.
i had to seperate them in the end, put him into a breeding box to recover, sadly i was too late.
Is the female aggresive towards him if he moves out of that spot, does he look to have any damage on him?

No damage but the female seems to be herding him back to the spot every time it moves.

iamahab · Mar 3, 2022

MartysReef said:
Females are the ones that wear the pants in the relationship, how long have you had them and are they already a pair or are you attempting to make them a pair? They can be fighting each other in some cases. I have heard of cyano being toxic to some fish so I would deff get in there and siphon that cyano out of there wherever you see it and get it off there as well.

They were a pair when I got them.I have had them since august and I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe they're not paired up. How do I go about siphoning it out? It's a small tank (waterbox mini 15) and i'm pretty sure it won't come off the rocks easily.