I just lost a clownfish

[jdircksen]

I've had my 24g nano-cube set up for just over a year now, and one of my ocellaris clownfish just died. I'm really not sure what happened, and I'm hoping you can provide some info for me.

I just dropped a frozen brine shrimp cube into my tank. I've done this 50 times before in the past year. It floats at the top and the fish nibble at it as it thaws. After the cube was gone, I turned the water flow back on and closed the lid. A few minutes later, I looked over and saw one of the clowns hiding deep in the rocks. I watched him for a couple minutes because his fins weren't moving and he was barely breathing. He got a spurt of energy and spazzed out for a second, then returned deep in the rock. I noticed one small nibble on one of his fins. Looks like a bite. I turned off the light to let him rest, came back a few minutes later and he was stuck to the inlet of the filtration compartment. Seems like he died over the course of 10 minutes.

The clowns were juveniles when I bought them. The dead one is just a hair bigger than the other, even after a year. Were they fighting for dominance?

The tank mates are a valencianna goby (1 year) and valentine puffer (1 month).

Any ideas?

 

[MarinaP]

A cube of frozen brine is way too much food for your fish in a 24G.

I would feed them 1/4 of a cube at the most daily, add some mysis and flakes to that.

Your clown prolly died of internal parasities

Female clowns should grow much faster than males.

 

[bluerug]

Marina i love the avatar.

 

[jdircksen]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7361492#post7361492 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MarinaP
A cube of frozen brine is way too much food for your fish in a 24G.

I would feed them 1/4 of a cube at the most daily, add some mysis and flakes to that.

Your clown prolly died of internal parasities

Female clowns should grow much faster than males.

too much? really?
between the 4 fish, they would eat 90% of the food before it hit the bottom.
i think it was the puffer that bit at the clowns because they have never had missing chunks of their fins in the past. i'd be surprised if the puffer was hungry because his belly is usually full and the attack happened at feeding time. the clown died so suddenly. if it was a parasite wouldn't I have seen him deteriorate over time?

 

[dantodd]

lots of disagreement about amounts to feed a tank but one thing is sure. Frozen brine is not adequate nutrition for fish as the only food. You need to give them a lot of different foods to eat. If you like mfg'd frozen foods try Ocean Nutrition formula food it is pretty diverse. A lot of people make their own frozen food and that is really superior in almost every way.

 

[jdircksen]

I have a rotation of frozen food: brine shrimp, bloodworms, green vegetarian mix, formula one, and prime reef.

 

[dantodd]

I'm out of easy solutions.

Why didn't you just do something really bad? That way it would be easy to fix.

 

[jdircksen]

haha. i too wish it was easy.
i'm sure it was a fight, but i'm not sure who the opponent was. if it's the puffer, then I will rethink getting another ocellaris to replace this one. although, it might just be an isolated event since they were all going after the same piece of food. in the future i'll thaw the food first so i can spread it around different areas of the tank.


here are some pics if anyone is interested. i hope they show up:

 

[dantodd]

use IMG instead of image in the tag.

 

[dantodd]

Nice looking fish. I hope you figure it out and are able to provide a mate for your remaining fish.

 

[stykthyn]

it should take more than one bite to take down a clown, there was a bigger problem going on there. I am leaning towards disease or parasite.