Any good clownfish docs? female with labored breathing

[baxterdawg]

Hey all,

I have a weird situation and wanted to see if anyone had any feedback. I have a pair of A. ocellaris, they are at least 3 yrs old and I have had them for about 7 months.

Today, after getting home from work, I noticed the female is hanging out in her favorite corner of the tank with very rapid and abnormal breathing. She is swimming in place towards the bottom of the tank. She did not respond to food, but ate normal last night as I remember. There is absolutely no sign of parasites, rotting fins, no observable physical issues. The tank parameters NH4, nitrite, nitrate are all 0 and I did a 10% water change last night with RO/DI water. All other fish are looking good.

Anyone got any suggestions of this as an early sign of an infectin of some sort?
Thanks

 

[Jovreefer]

Any sudden changes in the tank, stress to the fish or new fish added?

Sounds like the first stages of Brook to me.

 

[Slakker]

Swimming head-down in a quiet spot for more than a few seconds at a time can be an indicator of Amyloodinium(Marine Velvet).

Have you added anything to the system lately that could have introduced parasites?

 

[baxterdawg]

Thanks for the response,

No new fish have been added.

Now that it is mentioned about the addition of parasites, two days prior to the water change, I used the bucket to take water out of the QT tank, but it has been at hypo levels of SG for over a month and the fish have not shown any sign of illness for almost 2 weeks. Although, I have a hard time believing that in less than 24 hours that a dry bucket would hold viable parasites in an infectious form that could cause that rapid of a response.

I will definitely continue to watch for advancing signs of the Brook or Marine Velvet.

 

[Slakker]

Yeah, the bucket seems like an unlikely source, but there's a good chance that there were still some parasites in some form of the life cycle in the QT tank, even at Hypo. IIRC, it takes at least 4 weeks from the last visible signs of parasitic infection to be sure that the cycle has been broken and that the fish are parasite free.

However, if the bucket was dry for 24 hours, that should have killed anything. If there was a bit of water in the bottom of it though, that could potentially be your culprit.


Best of luck, I hope this turns out to be nothing more than a bit of a fussy couple of days for her.