Clownfish acting strange

[eshook]

My clown fish has been acting strange for the past few days. His swim pattern is very off and he has not been eating a lot - which is abnormal. Tonight I got home and found him half sucked into the overflow. Not dead, but very weak. I turned off the pump and fed him and he ate a little bit of food, but not even half as much as normal.

I just checked params and the calcium is off

calcium: 520!
kh: 7
phos: 0
nitrate: 0
pH: 7.8 ( a little low)

The calcium shouldn't be affecting the clownfish though, should it? Nothing else is acting strange in terms of other fish, corals, or inverts. As far as I can tell he looks ok - I can't find any external signs although I don't know what I am looking for.

Does anyone have any ideas to look for or try?

 

[Spooky208]

Calcium shouldn't affect your clown fish. How long have you had him? What other signs can you tell us?

 

[eshook]

I didn't really think so.

He's been in the tank almost a year and is housed with a orchid dottyback who has been in the tank about 6 months. I moved the tank a few months ago and haven't added anything new since before the move. His typical behavior is to slowly swim in the current in the lower / mid regions of the tank - where there is less flow. Now he is swimming erratically in the high flow regions and at the top of the tank. His belly does not look sunk in and I cannot see any external differences. He is also typically a pig when eating - anything that comes close to his mouth is eaten. Now he will only take small pieces of food.

Most of my food was purchased a while ago - could it be the quality of the food? Is he slowly starving to death?

 

[Macimage]

Your ph is a bit low. This could be a symptom of something being off in your tank.

When there seems to be an unknown problem, I would try a large (50%) water change, however, be sure to match temp. and salinity. I'd also run carbon in case something contaminated the tank.

The only two problems I can think of that would cause those symptoms would be a lack of oxygen or stray electrical voltage.

Joyce

 

[eshook]

He is acting a little better today, but I will try a WC and see if that helps the problem.

Since its a nano I always run carbon, but it needs to be refreshed so I will swap it out with the WC. In terms of oxygen I always keep an airpump running. I remove the airstone to reduce microbubbles, but it should still keep the oxygen sufficient.

I didn't think about stray voltage. I don't know if I can really check for that. I might have a grounding plug somewhere so I could try to stick that in and see if its trips the GFCI.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Macimage]

How is he doing today?

Joyce

 

[eshook]

Thanks for asking Joyce. He is actually acting normal today! I opted to skip feeding yesterday and today we was pigging out.

Another member in our local club said they recently read an article about fish constipation. Saying fish will exhibit the same behaviors I described and the symptoms will go away in a few days and they did. I don't know if its constipation or not, but he seems to be doing well now.

 

[Macimage]

Glad to hear that! It may have been some of the changes you did too!

Joyce