Clown Not Eating

[davehead86]

My female eats all her fill and then usually the male goes and gets what he wants when she is done. He no longer eats the food. Its been a couple feedings of this. He does not exhibit any other strange behavior. The female and him swim together all day and then literally snuggle in the sand at night (its adorable). My tank perimeters are not out of line (all zeros). No signs of ick, labored breathing, distress, or problems with gills.

Help!

 

[addictedreefer]

My female eats all her fill and then usually the male goes and gets what he wants when she is done. He no longer eats the food. Its been a couple feedings of this. He does not exhibit any other strange behavior. The female and him swim together all day and then literally snuggle in the sand at night (its adorable). My tank perimeters are not out of line (all zeros). No signs of ick, labored breathing, distress, or problems with gills.

Help!

Are your alk, ph and salinity "zero" as well?

 

[m0nkie]

how long have you had the fish?

I think my Borb caught Fluke from my unQT'd clown... he was very active in my tank for months before.. suddenly stopped eating.

 

[traveller7]

Internal parasites, external parasites(flukes as suggested), can arrive or be present for quite awhile before exhibiting signs.

Post a picture so folks can assess body mass, etc.

 

[davehead86]

Are your alk, ph and salinity "zero" as well?

Salinity is 1.023
PH is 7.9 - 8.0 (Do i need a ph buffer to bring it to 8.2?)
Dont test ALK or Magnesisum (didnt think i needed to with FOWLR)
I missed my 10% water change this week due to vacation and working super late. Plan on doing that tonight.

how long have you had the fish?

I think my Borb caught Fluke from my unQT'd clown... he was very active in my tank for months before.. suddenly stopped eating.

I have had them since July

Internal parasites, external parasites(flukes as suggested), can arrive or be present for quite awhile before exhibiting signs.

Post a picture so folks can assess body mass, etc.

I can post pics tonight when i get home from work.
My female is about 50% larger than my male. They have been this way since the day i picked them up. They were tiny when I got them.



Tried to feed again this morning and same results. Female went nuts, male is plain not interested.

 

[ginpang]

Salinity is 1.023
PH is 7.9 - 8.0 (Do i need a ph buffer to bring it to 8.2?)
Dont test ALK or Magnesisum (didnt think i needed to with FOWLR)




.

Calcium precipitates below 8.2 ph and above 8.3 so it cannot be absorbed neither by fish, invertebrates nor algae. So yes it is imperative that you try and bring it up I suspect your alkalinity is probably low as well. Maybe get reef builder and a good buffer .... Or you can get calcium magnesium and strontium separate but then you should get the test kits to along with them.

What does his poop look like? Normal?
Maybe try to feed him different food under a dome ( see threads on training a Mandarin to eat frozen food)

 

[davehead86]

The top is the female. The bottom is the male. Best I can get on phone.

I will get stuff for pH and the like tomorrow.


My wife says the male had yellowish poop but she didn't know if it looked stringy or regular.

 

[davehead86]

Closer of the male only.

 

[davehead86]

After a 20 percent water change the male is more active and actually showed some interest in a few food pellets I dropped in after.

Still going to get a pH buffer and tests for calcium and such.

 

[ThRoewer]

Calcium precipitates below 8.2 ph and above 8.3 so it cannot be absorbed neither by fish, invertebrates nor algae. ...

If the optimal pH range was that narrow there wouldn't be any reefs or even fish. Where did you get that info from?

 

[addictedreefer]

If the optimal pH range was that narrow there wouldn't be any reefs or even fish. Where did you get that info from?

+1. If that were the case, I'd have a snowstorm in my tank every night when the ph dips to 7.9. Acceptable reef ph is 7.8 - 8.5. OP - your ph is fine; no need to mess around with buffers.

 

[ginpang]

Clown Not Eating

Sorry for the misinformation ... My memory was flawed indeed ... debelius Baensch marine atlas pp. 135 through 144 on ph and alkalinity...

" element of hardness that react with various carbonate are important. Particularly calcium will become limiting if stone corals or other animals and algae that incorporate calcium are present. The main component of the skeleton is calcium carbonate( caco3) . This compound is only slightly soluble in water with a ph of 8.2. Therefore , we recommend a ph of 8.0 to 8.2 as the ideal value in marine aquarium. "

But that may be outdated info because Lfs clerk kept saying 8.2 to 8.3 was ideal. !?

Sorry shouldn't have answered so promptly.

 

[ginpang]

I always stayed at 8.2 because it seemed to give me peak coralline growth also halimeda kept me in check.

 

[davehead86]

So I tested number last night and ammonia was a little high .5ppm. I do a 30 percent water change and the ammonia is now at .25ppm. How is that possible. I bet this is the problem. But am not sure how I keep getting these different readings at certain points. Are the api tests that inaccurate? I didn't think they would be. Maybe I'm just going color crazy with the color cards.

 

[mcfa2403]

Captive bred clownfish, in my experience, can tolerate low levels of ammonia for at most a week before they start to really struggle (wasn't my tank too long to get in to). But a cycled tank should not contain any ammonia so that is a big issue. How long has the tank been set up? How much are you feeding? What is the water volume? What all living do you have in there?

To me it sounds like the tank didn't properly cycle and the combined stress of the ammonia level plus the aggressiveness of the female has worn on the male. When the water was changed and the ammonia dropped the male perking back up would seem to indicate this. It is not just a matter of being accurate but API is also not terribly precise so while ammonia appears to have dropped by 50% it may just be that it cannot distinguish the difference.

I think API is just fine for reading ammonia as once it reads zero your tank should be cycled and not have to test unless something catastrophic happens. Another issue may be one of aeration as I am not seeing a source of flow in your tank.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Captive bred clownfish, in my experience, can tolerate low levels of ammonia for at most a week before they start to really struggle (wasn't my tank too long to get in to). But a cycled tank should not contain any ammonia so that is a big issue. How long has the tank been set up? How much are you feeding? What is the water volume? What all living do you have in there?

To me it sounds like the tank didn't properly cycle and the combined stress of the ammonia level plus the aggressiveness of the female has worn on the male. When the water was changed and the ammonia dropped the male perking back up would seem to indicate this. It is not just a matter of being accurate but API is also not terribly precise so while ammonia appears to have dropped by 50% it may just be that it cannot distinguish the difference.

I think API is just fine for reading ammonia as once it reads zero your tank should be cycled and not have to test unless something catastrophic happens. Another issue may be one of aeration as I am not seeing a source of flow in your tank.

Ammonia present in a cycled tank doesn't mean it's not cycled. It means your bioload has exceeded that of your nitrifying bacteria. You need more filtration or less fish.

 

[davehead86]

I went to the LFS they said a flow rate might be a problem too. And that surface agitation may be causing some of the problem. So I moved one of my two hydor powerheads to agitate the surface much more than before. I may be looking into removing the glass lid I have too if this doesn't seem to work.

I have two clowns. 5 hermit crabs and 6 or so assorted snails. I feed once a day. Pellets and some dried mysis shrimp.

I have a hob filter and it has two carbon filters in it. I got overzealous and just completely tossed one of these filters while cleaning last week. So I'm wondering if this is causing the weird ammonia levels. And the added stress besides just the female.

I'm guess at this point with the given information best I can do is to keep the water as good as possible with more water changes of a smaller amount and then keeping the pH leveled at 8.3 with the surface agitation the bacteria will increase again and problems will be over.

 

[Skaters216]

i had the same problem after i added a writer anemone one of my clowns would never come out to eat, looked like he was scared of the other fish i increased the flow rate on my mp40s and he seemed more at ease during feeding time after a couple of days he started eating little by little. doing great now

 

[davehead86]

UPDATE

After a midweek water change changing a power head position for more arration and leveling off the pH my male clownfish is still not doing great.

He is lathargic still. Slightly interested in food but not eating much at all. He also now has gills that are visibly red and could be inflamed.

I started a 1.5 gallon qt tank tonight for if I need to treat him. Still just don't know what's going on.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Post this in the disease forum. He's not eating because of the redness you are seeing. Now to determine what it is. Could be as simple as doing a fw dip to cure him.