Keeping Clowns in my LFS...Need Advice

J

jb198870

New member
I work at an LFS and have worked there for 5 years. I'm pretty familiar and educated on saltwater. I keep most of the common ornamental fish, inverts and corals however I am having trouble with my clowns and need some advice.

I get shipments of perculas, oscellaris, and black oscellaris. I house each type separately in groups of about 20-25 in 20 gallon stock tanks with sand and live rock. The tanks i house them in are part of a 1200 gallon system and I know my water parameters are perfect and hardly fluctuate. My problem is that they slowly die one by one. Over a period of two weeks if none of them sell they all end up dead.

I feed them a few times per day. Usually spirulina brine shrimp or a local product called black jack reef crack which is a high quality mix.

My boss swears its a fine set up but something must be wrong here. Not sure if I'm trying to keep too many clowns in a 20 gallon tank or maybe not feeding them the correct food? Just not sure. Any advice is welcome
 
[welcome]

Really hard to pinpoint it could be a number of things.
One diseased clown can jack them all when plumbed together.
If they are older they will begin to fight for space or dominance when crowded.
So many things, I could go on.
 
I Also work for a lfs here in the uk... Our clowns are always put in to a seperate qt system.

3 racks with 2 tanks each in each, no substrate no live rock, external sump running a rack each. Live rock only stays in the sump and never goes anywhere else and has only been used for the qt system. All fish go straight into the qt system for a few weeks at about 20 fish per 40 gallon tank, being treated daily as needed.

Problem we found before was, the LR had previously leached some bad stuff and was slowly seeping into the tank, at a rate with couldn't be controlled by filtration.

Are the fishing going straight out on display or into a qt?
 
They are going directly to a display tank for sale. I'm not seeing ich or anything external going on but that doesn't mean nothing is wrong. Where do you keep the water parameters in your qt tank?
 
I'd ask to see the water parameters results, something isn't right with the water is my guess. Clowns are pretty hardy fish.
 
I used to have trouble keeping clowns. They would die within about a week or two without any noticeable symptoms other than slowly not eating and lethargic behavior.
After some advice on here about QT ( I was not QT anything before) I decided to try the clowns again. I treated with a couple of rounds of Prazipro. They are in my display now after 8 weeks of QT with only Prazipro.
Maybe some internal parasite that you cant see???

Where is your LFS located maybe I got some of you clowns LOL JK
 
Last edited:
Do ALL of your clowns always die or MOST of your clowns die? There is a big difference when dealing with clowns and we can possibly better help you if you can answer this.
 
!. Are these wild or captive bred clownfish?

2. Where do you get your clownfish from (direct import, wholesale, breeder, ...)?

3. What are the symptoms of the disease that kills the clowns?

4. What are your preventive measures against diseases?

BTW: If you get your clownfish from ORA, that may be the source of your troubles. All shipments of ORA clowns my local LFS received this year came with either brook or heavy bacterial infections and killed off entire systems with well established fish. I got similar reports from other stores. On top of that most ORA fish are heavily deformed. They are by now too much involved with Petco and other chain stores to care about quality anymore.
 
I would try and set up control group made of a stand alone 20 gallon tank separate from the main system . Make up new water as close to the same water parameters not using any of the other systems water live rock or sand and being careful not to cross contaminate anything.

Since you work at a lfs, when new shipment of live rock comes in use that since it has not been in the main system. With just a powerhead and maybe air stone.
This way when you get the shipment of clowns in, you can take a couple and see how they do in the control group compared to the ones in the 1200 gal system.
if they have the same die off in 2 weeks it would appear to be sick fish. Then i would try to treat with some medication for the next batch.
Hope you try this I'm extremely curious in the outcome.
Good Luck
 
This is my lfs, so I'll be curious to see what the cause is. I LOVE this place and am sad to see that some clowns aren't doing well. Fear not, jb, I won't divulge the store name, for posterity of course.

I wondered about the health of some of the animals on a couple of occasions, as sometimes they (one tank in partucular) looked a bit crowded. I've never seem any terribly sick fish there, at least not visually ill, but the occasional floater isn't a surprise either. I think that these tanks need a proper filtration system and a much larger system volume. Having a dozen or so individual ~20 gal tanks is far too difficult to maintain. I imagine it could be a nitrate issue, or incompatibility between tank mates...or mismatched personalities within the same.
 
Amoo said:
This would lead me to think more aggression then instead of disease. AKA too many fish, too small a space, they gang up and "slowly" take out one at a time.
Click to expand...

+1, especially if there are not very many of them to begin with the hacking order will whittle down to a pair quickly.
 
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