Ocelaris white mouth / cut on lower lip

[Drakal]

Hi, sorry if my english is not on point.

I have a pair of captive breed clowns, got them since 6 days. One of them have some white decoloration around his mouth, but it seems to gain coloration back, but today i noticed a little cut on his lower lip.

At the reception, i noticed a mark on his right gills too (it was a bit red but it's better today), so i suipposed he was fighting at the store. The temp inside the shipping box was at 31°C when i received them, is was HOT, could be a side effect ? But i didn't noticed any cut on his lip so it's recent...

He is eating a lot, my tank have tons of pods and i feed frozen/pellets/flakes.

The gills after few days

The mouth

Should i be worry ?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Clownfish will often fight one another. You may never see it happen, it is over in a second, but the results can be seen as minor injuries. I think this may be what happened here, or that the clown got "snagged" in the net when it was captured to send to you, and that damaged its mouth and gill cover.

31 degrees C can be harmful if there isn't good oxygen in the water, but that won't cause skin damage like that.

In this case, since the clownfish isn't showing any other symptoms, and is eating well, I would not try any treatment. That said, I always suggest people quarantine their new fish as you never know what diseases they may have been exposed to before coming to you.


Jay

 

[Drakal]

Hi, and thanks for the reply, It reassures me !

Yeah i need to setup a quarantine tank, no excuses...

 

[Drakal]

update :

He had a lot of mucus on the wound so i did a freshwater dip few days ago, to help cleaning it, it did remove all the mucus, and today he is fully healed and coloration is back !