Fish Dying One by One

[Zakary2003]

So what are the specific steps I can take to help the skinny female clown and hopefully prevent whatever she has from spreading?

I can't remove her from the system for treatment unless it can be done in a 5 gallon bucket or something.

I'd happily give her to someone who can properly treat her if anyone is in the St. Petersburg Florida area. This clownfish was a gift and I really like her, but I'd rather give her up than watch her wither away.

 

[Zakary2003]

How do my other three fish look? They all look like they're a healthy weight to me.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

How do my other three fish look? They all look like they're a healthy weight to me.

Those all look fine to me.

Other than the two treatments I mentioned, the only other thing to try is multiple (4x) feedings a day to see if you can bulk it up.

Internal parasites are not super contagious.

 

[Zakary2003]

How do my other three fish look? They all look like they're a healthy weight to me.

Those all look fine to me.

Other than the two treatments I mentioned, the only other thing to try is multiple (4x) feedings a day to see if you can bulk it up.

Internal parasites are not super contagious.

Ok. Should I split my current feedings in half or add two additional full sized feedings?

 

[Zakary2003]

I found the neon goby. His death is almost certainly unrelated to the clownfish's issues. There is a shell with two holes in it, the opening and a smaller puncture. It looks like the neon goby went into the shell and tried to leave through the smaller puncture hole and got stuck. He's hermit food now.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Ok. Should I split my current feedings in half or add two additional full sized feedings?

Two additional half feedings, just avoid adding a lot of food past the point where the fish are eating it all.

 

[BZOFIQ]

.. Metronidazole at 1% in the food, fed every three days for three treatments can help with that. Tapeworms can be treated with praziquantel in the food (tough to do as the dose is 50 mg per kg of fish mass, so you need to know the weight of the fish) but prazi in the water at the normal 2 ppm dose works also and doesn't require knowing the weight of the fish. Internal nematode worms require a different treatment.

Jay,

Can this be done right in the reef tank?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Jay,

Can this be done right in the reef tank?

Prazi can be dosed in the water, but metro cannot.

 

[Lonster00]

Hey Zachary,
I have a Snow Flurry clown I bought at Sea Life on 34th st in St Pete last year that looked the same way, but I loved her markings and she was very inexpensive, so I took a chance. I put her in a quarantine tank with Copper Power as I would any new fish for 4 weeks. She started eating great after 4 or 5 days and still going strong. I need to find a longfin male to pair up with her now. You can also try Rally Ruby Reef in your tank. Ive used in in my display tank last year when I had an issue in another tank and was unsure if somehow I had contaminated the display tank swapping out a net (stupid mistake) and crabs, snails, and soft corals (Kenyan Tree and Mushrooms, Lettuce corals, polyps) were all fine. I think I treated daily for a week.

 

[Zakary2003]

Just a quick update for anyone following. I've added two pellet feedings per day to my feeding schedule and I finally found a pellet the clownfish eats. I've been soaking the pellets in amino acids and vitamins to give her a boost. She is still alive and has put on a bit more weight. She's still pretty underweight, but doing much better. All the tattering on her fins is starting to heal too.

I never found the cause. Maybe it's genetic. I have no idea.

I had a friend who is a teacher's assistant for the marine biology lab at Eckerd College test the fish for external parasites. He found a small number of gill flukes on the clownfish but not on my blenny or the male mandarin. We couldn't catch the female mandarin or the MIA yasha goby for samples.

I don't feel like those would cause her to waste away like this or kill the male, but I've been giving her freshwater dips once a week to treat them, and she didn't have any flukes in the last sample.

I don't think we will test her again for a while because it's pretty invasive. It requires sedating her and then taking a tissue sample from the gills by literally snipping a small area with tiny scissors. At this point I think it does more harm than good.


In other news, she finally started hosting my bta.