Sick fish??

Reefhack · Jan 17, 2023

My 5 year old clown has this spot near her head. Any ideas on what it might be? She’s swimming fine and I don’t have a QT set up so I’m not sure what I should do.

vetteguy53081 · Jan 17, 2023

Reefhack said:
My 5 year old clown has this spot near her head. Any ideas on what it might be? She’s swimming fine and I don’t have a QT set up so I’m not sure what I should do.

This is bacterial and may have stemmed from injury. To assure it does not become very infected or end up in raw flesh, treat fish in quarantine with seachem kanaplex for at least 5-7 days and monitor ammonia levels with a reliable test kit and even add air stone for added oxygen.

Jay Hemdal · Jan 17, 2023

We see this a lot in clownfish, always on a white area. Mostly though, I see it in new fish, not long term captives like this. In some cases, it just goes away on its own, in other cases, the fish dies. It is below the skin's surface, so adding medication to the water isn't likely to help much.

I've never had one in hand, so I've not been able to send tissues out for sampling. The best I can come up with is that it's some sort of bruise or deep tissue damage.

I posted a question about this in the clownfish forum a while back, and although other people have seen this as well, nobody really had a treatment for it.

Here is the other thread:

Clownfish bruising/lesion?

All, Over the past two years or so, I've come across dozens of cases on the fish disease forum here of an issue with clownfish that we have not been able to identify. I've never seen it on any clownfish I've had myself, but the issue seems most common on designer clowns, which I don't work...

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