Clownfish lesion?

[karid]

I'm sorry for posting these questions - I've had the same fish for so long and everything's been great. I added some new fish this weekend (including a pair of clowns) and am a little paranoid.

I saw this on the male clownfish this morning. It wasn't there yesterday. Could it be a scrape or sting? Or something more serious? The area around it is paler than the rest of the orange. He is hosted to my frogspawn. Urgh! Eating fine and swimming normal.

 

[6stringpenguin]

as far as clowns go, 2 is company and 3 is a crowd. If you just added another pair to the tank, they will likely try to kill the third wheel. He probably just got beat up.

 

[karid]

no no - there is only the pair. I had no clowns. I added 2 this weekend. It is the male of the pair (the smaller one) that has this.

 

[jcgreen7]

I have just noticed the same type of spot in the same area on my male maroon clown. I have had him for close to a year now and he is paired with a considerably larger female ( two maybe threes times larger). When I first paired the two she gave it to him pretty bad, but they have been fine after about the first three weeks. I have had no other issues with either of these clowns. Don't want to lose one now

Anyone with any info please be so inclined to chime in. I am not sure what this is or how to treat it.

 

[jcgreen7]

Update

Update

This morning I found my clown in the bottom cormer of the tank. So I fished him out and put into a QT tank. It seems as though his left side is paralized. He can only swim in a circle to the left. Also though his left eye is bulged out and his stomach looks bloaded.

Talked to LFS today and they can tell me anything, besides possible tank conditions. Tank conditions are not that far out of standards.

They did mention one possibility which is Stray Voltage. Basically some of the equipment might be shorting into the water putting a small electrical current into the tank which in return can have ill effects on livestock.

 

[karid]

I'm sorry to hear about your clown! that is not good. Mine is still doing fine, just with that weird lesion/clump on his upper back.

I do not have stray voltage in my tank, so if our fish have the same condition, it is not that.

I bought mine as a pair, so I hope it wasn't the female niping at him (my female is also about twice the size of the male). Or maybe it was a "love bite"? Could there be something else in your tank biting the fish? There isn't in mine, so it could only be the female, if that is what it is.

It kind of looks like that cauliflower disease (but not quite so cauliflowery) - which is just a virus and healthy fish in a healthy system get over it in time.

 

[karid]

Well, my female now has 3 patches on her that look like this and my male has the original patch (now grown) and one other.

Could this be Brook??

 

[sam75]

One of my clowns has (what appears to be) the exact same thing for almost a year now. The second clown doesn't seem to be affected. Spots will come and go lasting for a few weeks, then disappear. Seems to be brought on by stress. A few months later they come back in different places. It doesn't seem to bother her too much although she does seem a bit more lethargic when they first appear. I don't think it's brook as from what I've read they would probably be dead now. I agree it does not look like the pictures I've seen of lymphocystis either, but that's is the closest thing I can find for the symptoms. Hopefully things have gotten better for you. Any luck finding out what it is?

thx.
-S

 

[karid]

Nope, it didn't get better for the female. I did a 4-min freshwater dip with both fish and the next day the female was much worse. The female's fins were all torn off. The male was recovering though. Since the female was even worse off, it was suggested I do another dip, a longer one. So I did a 10-min freshwater dip and moved them both to a QT tank. The female died a few hours later. The male didn't seem bothered at all by the dips and has recovered nicely.

I should have left them alone. I think now it that the lesions might have been just a reaction/sting from the frogspawn they hosted to and what actually killed her was stress from the freshwater dips. I don't actually know for sure - but the male is fine and the female is now gone. My ocellaris clowns I used to have would get black spots on them from the frogspawn (not white lesion things), so I didn't think it was the same at first.

 

[kevin2000]

Must reading for anyone who is trying to keep multiple clowns or different species of clowns.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=245520

 

[sam75]

Kirad,

Sorry for you loss. That sucks... Glad to hear the male has recovered though.

I don't think it's was caused by the frogspawn (at least in my case) as it started appearing way before I had any corals. At first I thought it might be from getting wacked by my tang's tail, but I have pretty much ruled that out over the last year. For one thing the other clown gets the same or worse treatment, but hase never showed any of the bumps. Secondly the bumps always seem to appear after some stressful event (new fish added, temp gets high etc...) which leads me to believe it is some type of virus, bateria, or pariste.

 

[karid]

Interesting! Well that is good to know and actually makes me feel a little better (like I wasn't solely responsible for killing the fish).

The other fish I recently added (rabbitfish) actually had ich (great), so all my 4 fish are now in QT undergoing hyposalinity treatment.