Does my Clownfish have Ich?

[DiamondDog1030]

As the name suggests, I noticed two white spots this morning on her head. Upon looking at her for a bit, I noticed a little more. I have found around 3-5 white spots. Male seems not to have any spots.

No changes in behavior, just the usual floating/ digging up sand, and appetite seemed fine. Food has been predominantly pellets, but I will feed Mysis shrimp some days to vary the diet. Just did a water change a few days ago, so Nitrate is below 7.4 ppm. Salinity always hovers around 33-36 ppt from evaporation. My tank is a 15-gallon AIO with a cleaner shrimp, snails (Nassarius and Trochus), and two BTA anemones as tankmates. Filters are a sock and sponge filter in the back, with ceramic media there too.

I am not really in a scenario right now to have a hospital tank, but I will see what I can do after hearing some opinions. I would most likely do ich management since my space restrictions are that I cannot set up a hospital tank to account for airborne transfer.

Thank you in advance to anyone who can offer a diagnosis or advice.

P.S sorry for the bad pics, its just an iphone

 

[vetteguy53081]

As the name suggests, I noticed two white spots this morning on her head. Upon looking at her for a bit, I noticed a little more. I have found around 3-5 white spots. Male seems not to have any spots.

No changes in behavior, just the usual floating/ digging up sand, and appetite seemed fine. Food has been predominantly pellets, but I will feed Mysis shrimp some days to vary the diet. Just did a water change a few days ago, so Nitrate is below 7.4 ppm. Salinity always hovers around 33-36 ppt from evaporation. My tank is a 15-gallon AIO with a cleaner shrimp, snails (Nassarius and Trochus), and two BTA anemones as tankmates. Filters are a sock and sponge filter in the back, with ceramic media there too.

I am not really in a scenario right now to have a hospital tank, but I will see what I can do after hearing some opinions. I would most likely do ich management since my space restrictions are that I cannot set up a hospital tank to account for airborne transfer.

Thank you in advance to anyone who can offer a diagnosis or advice.

P.S sorry for the bad pics, its just an iphone

This may very well be grains of sand which stick to their heavy mucus coating. With ich, dots will increase in numbers each 24 hours. Check fish later and tomorrow and see if there are more and in different spots. If not, sand

 

[DiamondDog1030]

This may very well be grains of sand which stick to their heavy mucus coating. With ich, dots will increase in numbers each 24 hours. Check fish later and tomorrow and see if there are more and in different spots. If not, sand

Got it, thank you. Will update tomorrow.

 

[DiamondDog1030]

Checked on them again today. Seems like there might be 1-3 more spots. One on the head, now on the right side above her eye. Another between her left eye and the gill. There is one on her back, near her spiny dorsal fin, but I think that was there yesterday.

I am not too confident in my observation since the blue light is making it a little hard to tell.

If this is a flag for ich, is investing in a UV sterilizer a good call?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Checked on them again today. Seems like there might be 1-3 more spots. One on the head, now on the right side above her eye. Another between her left eye and the gill. There is one on her back, near her spiny dorsal fin, but I think that was there yesterday.

I am not too confident in my observation since the blue light is making it a little hard to tell.

If this is a flag for ich, is investing in a UV sterilizer a good call?

The blue light makes it hard for us to tell also - can you change to a whiter light for the photos? A video might offer us different perspectives as well.

Here is a post I made about self-diagnosis of fish diseases:

Self-Diagnosis of Common Marine Fish Diseases

Self-Diagnosis of Common Marine Fish Diseases Jay Hemdal, c. 2025 Misdiagnosing fish diseases often leads to ineffective treatments, which can result in the loss of fish. Early and accurate diagnosis is critical for successful treatment. While the Fish Medics at Reef2Reef are trained to...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[DiamondDog1030]

Hi Jay,

Yeah I am currently trying to adjust them to the lighting right now. From what I can see at the moment, the spots I saw under blue don’t stand out as much under the white or they disappeared. Are they sand white or do they start developing that white color over the course of the day? The spots on the head were definitely there before because I saw the spots had height to them off the skin. I have current videos I tried to take, but I will try again later today when I get home.

I did read the self diagnosis article before publishing this thread. From my thought process, this was either early ich or scrapes. However, I wasn’t sure why it all was focused around the head

I will follow up once I am back if this isn’t enough right now.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hi Jay,

Yeah I am currently trying to adjust them to the lighting right now. From what I can see at the moment, the spots I saw under blue don’t stand out as much under the white or they disappeared. Are they sand white or do they start developing that white color over the course of the day? The spots on the head were definitely there before because I saw the spots had height to them off the skin. I have current videos I tried to take, but I will try again later today when I get home.

I did read the self diagnosis article before publishing this thread. From my thought process, this was either early ich or scrapes. However, I wasn’t sure why it all was focused around the head

I will follow up once I am back if this isn’t enough right now.

I don’t see any ich in these photos, but the first three didn’t seem to come through.

If there is ich, it is very early in the infection.

 

[DiamondDog1030]

It makes sense, if it does get to a point where I can catch it better on camera I’ll update this thread. Thanks for the time to both of you and for the advice regardless.