Still worried about my clownfish

michellejy · Apr 18, 2016

So it has been a week and a half since I saw the male clownfish on his side and unresponsive on the bottom of the tank. Since that time, I have not medicated them in any way, and he seems fine about 90% of the time. It's the other 10% that makes me worry that I will lose him.

He just seems lethargic. He doesn't seem to do any flashing/scratching against anything. His breathing is not noticeably different than the female's. I can't see any red spots/inflammation. I don't see signs of clamped/damaged fins.

Most of the time, he is swimming around with the female. They lock jaws pretty often but then go back to hanging out in a matter of seconds like nothing happened. Once or twice a day, I see him just lying on the bottom of the tank though, often on his side. If I put a net in the tank, he starts swimming like nothing happened again. I am torn on if I should just stick with observation and accept that he is weird or if I should be doing some sort of "just in case" treatment. The female doesn't exhibit any of the same behaviors.

They are in a 20 gallon quarantine tank with live rock and a HOB filter. Temp is kept at 78. Seachem alert badge is yellow and has been yellow the entire time. Salinity is 1.025. Water changes have been temperature and salinity matched. There is also an airstone in addition to the filter. I top off with RO/DI twice a day to maintain salinity, but I would guess it is losing 1/2 -1 cup of water at the most between top offs.

I could really use some opinions here.

ndz98 · Apr 18, 2016

The them in the threads tonight seem to be weird clownfish. I just saw two other posts like this one lol. It's probably just your clown acting weird. I know my clowns act weird all the time especially towards the evening. They go sideways and start floating slightly haha.

michellejy · Apr 18, 2016

ndz98 said:
The them in the threads tonight seem to be weird clownfish. I just saw two other posts like this one lol. It's probably just your clown acting weird. I know my clowns act weird all the time especially towards the evening. They go sideways and start floating slightly haha.

I had ocellaris clownfish before, and they NEVER stopped swimming. It is really disconcerting to see it on a daily basis.

ndz98 · Apr 18, 2016

Mine claimed the right back corner of the tank as there's and hardly swim around. They both hang out there all day just above the rocks but then they go down lower into the rocks and swim much less at night. They have done this for several months. I would just observe and see if anything changes.

michellejy · Apr 18, 2016

ndz98 said:
Mine claimed the right back corner of the tank as there's and hardly swim around. They both hang out there all day just above the rocks but then they go down lower into the rocks and swim much less at night. They have done this for several months.

I meant the ocellaris chose a place and sort of hovered there. I can't get used to not moving at all and hanging out on the bottom of the tank.

melypr1985 · Apr 18, 2016

The thing is, there are diseases and conditions that we dont know about- a good amount in fact. So, despite our efforts to diagnose the problem, we just might not know the answers. In your place, I would run TTM on the clowns and deworm with prazi. At the end of that, if he hasn't shown any other symptoms and is still acting exactly the same way then I'd have to make the decision to put him in the DT or just get a new male.

By the way, I can't remember what all you've done for this guy so I'm going on memory.

dbl · Apr 18, 2016

Sounds "normal" to me, clowns can be strange creatures. But as Meredith just said, if you're really nervous about it, and especially since they are still in QT, follow her advise and treat them. At least you then have the peace of mind knowing you've done what you can do.

michellejy · Apr 18, 2016

melypr1985 said:
The thing is, there are diseases and conditions that we dont know about- a good amount in fact. So, despite our efforts to diagnose the problem, we just might not know the answers. In your place, I would run TTM on the clowns and deworm with prazi. At the end of that, if he hasn't shown any other symptoms and is still acting exactly the same way then I'd have to make the decision to put him in the DT or just get a new male.

By the way, I can't remember what all you've done for this guy so I'm going on memory.

The only thing I have done so far was adding a dose of Prazipro on 4/7. I started having ammonia issues in the tank, so I did 15% water changes on 4/8 and 4/9 without adding additional Prazipro. I also added Amquel Plus to try to get the ammonia under control. About 4 hours after the Amquel Plus was added on 4/9, I found the clownfish on his side for the first time.

I ended up moving both clowns to a different quarantine tank and totally emptying the one that had been dosed with Prazipro after running carbon through for about 24 hours.

The heater in the second quarantine tank seemed to not be keeping the temp as stable as I would like, so I refilled the original quarantine tank and moved them back into the first tank 2 days ago. Obviously, this is more upheaval than I would like, but it is not anything beyond TTM would be.

michellejy · Apr 18, 2016

Is it possible this is some sort of stress reaction to the constant dominance displays with the larger clown? They only last a matter of seconds, but they are pretty frequent.

dbl · Apr 18, 2016

My answer is that it could be, but no way to know for sure. I know when I introduced my clowns, they went through all types of iterations while settling. They didn't leave the return nozzle for a couple of weeks, swimming sideways, upside down, etc. They finally settled down and then the sexing started and it was another round of wierdness!

melypr1985 · Apr 18, 2016

michellejy said:
I also added Amquel Plus to try to get the ammonia under control

This worries me. I'm wondering if maybe the amquell and the prazi had a bad reaction. Typically we say not to combine ammonia reducers with any medication simply because it can turn the med toxic. This is mainly associated with Copper, but it can be true with others as well. I'm thinking maybe little methyline blue would help heal up any damage that might have caused.... but this is assuming the bad reaction. It's a lot of speculation on my part.

Also, prazi has to be dosed twice with 5 to 7 days in between to truly eliminate any flukes. You may need to repeat that process even if you dont choose to go with TTM. I dont think I would use copper with this clown until he's showing signs of recovering from his weirdness or damage or whatever it is.

michellejy · Apr 18, 2016

I didn't do any additional meds for exactly that reason. *If* I needed some sort of emergency ammonia fix again, I didn't want to have medication in the tank.

I think Methylene Blue is the only medication I don't have on hand. Will it have any adverse effects if he doesn't need treatment?

melypr1985 · Apr 18, 2016

michellejy said:
I didn't do any additional meds for exactly that reason. *If* I needed some sort of emergency ammonia fix again, I didn't want to have medication in the tank.

I think Methylene Blue is the only medication I don't have on hand. Will it have any adverse effects if he doesn't need treatment?

It's mainly for healing up damage and injuries. I wouldn't think it would hurt him, but you can always just wait a couple more days and see if he heals himself.

Humblefish · Apr 18, 2016

michellejy said:
Most of the time, he is swimming around with the female. They lock jaws pretty often but then go back to hanging out in a matter of seconds like nothing happened.

Are you sure your male hasn't morphed into a female? Locking jaws frequently isn't normal for a male/female clownfish.

michellejy · Apr 18, 2016

Humblefish said:
Are you sure your male hasn't morphed into a female? Locking jaws frequently isn't normal for a male/female clownfish.

They are both juveniles. I purchased them as a bonded pair.

michellejy · Apr 18, 2016

I'm trying to add this from the mobile app, so hopefully it works. I took this video yesterday.

melypr1985 · Apr 18, 2016

Humblefish said:
Are you sure your male hasn't morphed into a female? Locking jaws frequently isn't normal for a male/female clownfish.

Good thought!

michellejy said:
They are both juveniles. I purchased them as a bonded pair.

Has your male ever done the "shimmy" when the female comes toward him? The "shimmy" is a submissive behavior that usually denotes the male is actually a male and submitting to the females authority.

rayn · Apr 18, 2016

By that video, I don't think the male female issue is solved yet. To me the smaller one was picking on the bigger one, which is backwards. Females are usually bigger. I also didn't see any signs of one being submissive to the other with the "shimmy" as Mel put it.