Fish seem sick, don’t know what to do!

[Amos-Moses]

Going to try to keep this short. Got a new tank and did a fish in cycle with two extreme snowflake clowns. Got the clowns from the same place and put them in at the same time. One is bigger than the other. We will call the big clown fish A and the small one fish B.

In the first week, fish A was establishing dominance over fish B. It all seemed to be settled and they were getting along great. Hanging out all the time together, sleeping together, no problems. At about three weeks, fish A began attacking fish B pretty relentlessly. Fish B was showing signs of stress (rapid breathing) and had visible damage to his gill where she kept biting him. He was still eating so I figured it was all dominance related.

Almost exactly one month in the tank finished cycling. We added a fire shrimp and a turbo snail. Fish B began hanging out with the fire shrimp all the time and fish A started leaving him alone. Fish B started improving. We then added a fire fish goby. The next day, both fish A and fish B stopped eating. Both were breathing rapidly. Fish A had white stringy poop. It’s been almost a week since they stopped eating. Fish B has taken a few nibbles at stuff, and are a few pellets Sunday night. FishA looks like she wants to eat, but won’t commit to anything. She hasn’t had a single bite, at least that I’ve seen, since Friday I think. Everyone else in the tank is eating and seems happy.

I’m now three days into dosing the tank with prazipro. Unfortunately I don’t have the space to set up a QT so I dosed the whole tank. I’m guessing it’s an internal parasite, but is there anything else I should do? Should I try a fresh water dip or finish up both treatments of prazi first? Also, is it normal to take a full month for internal parasite to show themselves? Everything was going just great until almost one month to the day.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Tough to say exactly what’s going on. The rapid breathing isn’t typically a symptom of internal infection, so your fish may have multiple issues. Not sure if anything can be done without a treatment tank though. If you had one, A copper treatment for the rapid breathing might be indicated, and you could swap General cure for the prazi, since the metronidazole in the GC helps with internal protozoans.
Jay