Sudden spot on my clown: disease/parasite or hurt?

[carolioness]

Hi everyone,

I own two young clownfish, they're the only fish in my tank (60L/16G). The tank is fairly new, been there for just a few months. The parameters are all okay and have been for a while.
While feeding the fish, I noticed that the darkest (and smallest) one suddenly has a little white-ish spot on its body, along with something that looks like its gill might be slightly damaged. The white spot isn't clearly on top of the skin, it looks more like a discolouration.
I recently tried taking pics of them, so I have pictures of two days ago and just took some pictures to try and show the spot.
Been scrolling through pictures of diseases/parasites on the internet but it's not yet clear to me what this might be...

The fish still seems active as usual, also still eating and doesn't seem to be breathing rapidly.

I did notice that the two are showing some more dominance-related behaviour in the last few days: the slightly bigger one is biting this smaller one sometimes (that's probably why its tail is also more damaged. They're not very violent, luckily, they're peaceful most of the time. but when i'm feeding them, the bigger one sometimes wants to make sure (s)he's first.) And the smaller one is doing those little shakes more often. So they're probably still finding out who is who (although I think it's quite clear who is the more dominant one).

A thing the fish do have, is that their feces sometimes looks stringy (either slightly white or very thin, almost slimy), but this isn't always the case, sometimes their poop looks normal. They both have this. I already showed my LFS (where I got them) pictures of that, and they said that it doesn't necessarily have to be alarming (or a parasite), but if they get thinner or start eating less, I had to tell him and in the meantime just keep an eye on them... So far they're both eating and aren't losing weight as far as I'm concerned.

Do you guys think this is a parasite / disease or is it possible that the more dominant clown did this with a bite?

(on the third photo you see a white thing near its back as well, but that was just something floating around in the tank )

Hope someone can help!

 

[tim132]

It could very well be just stress induced from the dominance shown. My clown came out with a small spot during this phase but soon disappeared once he realised he had to submit to the now female clown.

Still, when you hear slime and clowns in the same sentence and you do get concerned about brooklynella. From your pics nothing looks too untoward to me.

I would say it's a case of keeping your eye on them for the time being to be honest.

I know when my clowns were going through the dominance phase, the passive clown was forced to stay in a corner and not allowed to eat.

 

[carolioness]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Brooklynella is of course the first thing one kinda worries about with clowns I guess, but I don't think they're showing much of those symptoms. The only 'slime' thing that's there right now is the feces, and I'm not even sure if that's actually slimy or not. I guess it just looks slimy sometimes as it's nearly colourless. But again, this doesn't happen all the time... And I've heard and read that digestive problems can also be caused by stress.

Now that I think of it: when I just added them, the bigger one actually chased the smaller one around and was biting it pretty hard, and the smaller one suddenly had something that looked like a small white spot as well. The fins and tail were pretty torn apart at that time too, so I just assumed that it was caused by the bigger one being slightly violent. But the spot disappeared and the fins healed... So maybe it is just that now!

Will definitely keep an eye on them! I'm quite new to saltwater (started last summer) so I'm always scared that I'll do something wrong and accidentally hurt my animals, so I just want to make sure everything's okay. Let's just hope it's nothing too serious.

 

[reefidiot??]

I know that I'm late and all but I'm pretty sure its just a weirdly grown scale happened with ym clown and the next day he was fine and its been 2 weeks since and I am pretty sure I'm right

 

[carolioness]

Might be! Glad your clownfish seems to be okay! That particular spot on mine is gone now luckily.

My bigger clown is being quite mean still, and a few days ago (when I noticed a lot of dominant behaviour from the bigger one), this smaller one had some sort of darker spot on the white part of his body. So maybe it is caused by biting or stress. It's still a little visible now, so I'll just keep an eye on it to see if it won't get worse or change...
But I really hope the dominant one will actually stop nipping the smaller one soon, as its fins are also looking pretty rough now. Hope the smaller one will just make it without too much damage.

 

[reefidiot??]

Might be! Glad your clownfish seems to be okay! That particular spot on mine is gone now luckily.

My bigger clown is being quite mean still, and a few days ago (when I noticed a lot of dominant behaviour from the bigger one), this smaller one had some sort of darker spot on the white part of his body. So maybe it is caused by biting or stress. It's still a little visible now, so I'll just keep an eye on it to see if it won't get worse or change...
But I really hope the dominant one will actually stop nipping the smaller one soon, as its fins are also looking pretty rough now. Hope the smaller one will just make it without too much damage.

I am so happy for you for one reason, Oh my god when I look at the clownfish section all I can see is "Why is my clownfish sooo mean" and lo and behold they had 2 female clownfish or in general 2 equally sized clowns I just wanna say now Respect 100+ take that as you will

 

[carolioness]

I am so happy for you for one reason, Oh my god when I look at the clownfish section all I can see is "Why is my clownfish sooo mean" and lo and behold they had 2 female clownfish or in general 2 equally sized clowns I just wanna say now Respect 100+ take that as you will

Hope they'll acknowledge their size differences too, though! 'Cause there isn't a huuuge difference as they're both still young. However, there IS a difference (and I'm pretty sure the bigger one is getting bigger quicker than the smaller one) and there's definitely a difference when it comes to who's more dominant. ;-) So hope they will just live peacefully eventually.