My clowns have a disease

[Agathos]

I am scared.

My clowns have for the last few days had some white blotches/dots on their skin and notches in their tail fins. It doesn't look too bad, but I am afraid it might be something really bad. The white patches/dots have some kind of white mass growing on them. Right now the male has some greyish area without any growth, and the female has a dot on her tail with growth on. It comes and goes a bit. They behave normal, eat like crazy and are curious.

My waters parameters are good (nitrate/nitrite/ammonium 0; pH 8.6, salinity 1.024; temperature 26 C) and stable.

I have started doing more water changes and try to stress them as little as possible.

Picture of the female. The notches in the tail fin are easy to see, as is the white dot on the tail with the curious growth. Other white dots and lines are from particles in the water.

Any one know what I should do now?

EDIT: I posted in the wrong section, this ought to be in the Disease section. Moderators please move this thread. Sorry.

 

[daddy'sgirl]

It could be ich, although there are no guarantees. One thing I would do is if you do not have any, buy some Kent Marine Garlic Xtreme. Follow the directions for adding it directly to the tank and soaking their food in it. If you have any other fish in the tank I would remove the clowns and put them in a hospital tank(a ten gallon would work just fine). Next, do some research. Find some pics of ich and see if it looks like what you have. If it doesn't consider trying Binox. I have a Blue Hippo Tang that got white spots. I asked the guy at my LFS what I should use, and that's what he recommended. It worked and she's all better now. Have you added any new fish to the tank recently?

 

[beerboy]

I'm now clown expert nor Have I had a case of ich, but my female clown recently had a weird white growth on the middle of her body of course I freaked out because it looked like ich but I wasn't so sure, she was breathing and still eating like a pig out of my hand like normal, a couple of days later the growth was gone and you can see what I guess you may call a scar if you look closely. I think she may of damaged herself on something, but I was still ready to grab them out and quarantine them.

 

[Agathos]

It could be ich, although there are no guarantees. One thing I would do is if you do not have any, buy some Kent Marine Garlic Xtreme. Follow the directions for adding it directly to the tank and soaking their food in it. If you have any other fish in the tank I would remove the clowns and put them in a hospital tank(a ten gallon would work just fine). Next, do some research. Find some pics of ich and see if it looks like what you have. If it doesn't consider trying Binox. I have a Blue Hippo Tang that got white spots. I asked the guy at my LFS what I should use, and that's what he recommended. It worked and she's all better now. Have you added any new fish to the tank recently?

These are my first fish in a tank that's been running for two months. The clowns have been in my tank for about one month. I have no other fish.

I feed them with Ocean Nutrition Formula TWO which contains garlic. They eat like crazy.

 

[Agathos]

I'm now clown expert nor Have I had a case of ich, but my female clown recently had a weird white growth on the middle of her body of course I freaked out because it looked like ich but I wasn't so sure, she was breathing and still eating like a pig out of my hand like normal, a couple of days later the growth was gone and you can see what I guess you may call a scar if you look closely. I think she may of damaged herself on something, but I was still ready to grab them out and quarantine them.

I've been thinking that it might be infected wounds, but I don't understand why both clowns should develop multiple wounds around the same time, unless it's sores from the anemone which they just started hosting...

 

[Perc25]

I'm not sure on whether or not melafix will upset nems or not but it may be something worth looking into, I have used it before with good results against bacterial infections and the like with good success, but then again, if you have a nem I would be cautious using it.

 

[Agathos]

I'm not sure on whether or not melafix will upset nems or not but it may be something worth looking into, I have used it before with good results against bacterial infections and the like with good success, but then again, if you have a nem I would be cautious using it.

I have no other tank to put them in while treating them, so I am a bit worried that using general anti-bacterials might harm the beneficial bacterial cultures in my tank.

 

[Perc25]

Yea, thats a tough one, hopefully it will all work out.

 

[Agathos]

Yea, thats a tough one, hopefully it will all work out.

I'll monitor them closely. Luckily it doesn't seem to affect them in any way and its been going on for a few days now, so at least I rule out all fast-killing diseases.

I believe it is sores from their unaccustomed contact with the anemone that have become infected...

 

[MarinaP]

If white growth turns cauliflower-like, then they have lymphocystis. It's viral, and improved water conditions will help.

Torn fins might be from a predator (crab, for example) that hitchhiked on the rock. Look for it at night.

 

[Agathos]

If white growth turns cauliflower-like, then they have lymphocystis. It's viral, and improved water conditions will help.

Torn fins might be from a predator (crab, for example) that hitchhiked on the rock. Look for it at night.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have looked for crabs and other unwanted hitchhikers, but never seen anyone, even at night. The reason why I think this is not caused by a crab is that the torn tail seem to be correlated with the white spots.

Anyway, it's going in the right direction. The male is completely fine now, and the female hasn't had any new spots for many days. The tail shows tell-tale marks of the disease, though. Hopefully it will grow back again.

 

[Agathos]

I have looked for crabs and other unwanted hitchhikers, but never seen anyone, even at night. The reason why I think this is not caused by a crab is that the torn tail seem to be correlated with the white spots.

Well, what do you know. An hour after writing this I found an evil looking crab in my tank. Red eyes, 1 cm across the shell, hairy legs. And it was living in the same cave where my clowns used to sleep before they moved to my anemone!

I spent the next days trying to get rid of it. I used self-made traps, bait on a string and tried poking it's hole with a sharp object. In the end I had to remove the rock and force it out of it's hole with a sharp pin.

Since then my clowns have improved gradually. The female still has torn tail, but it looks to be recovering and none of them have any new white dots.

I believe the torn fins were caused by the crab and the wounds were then infected (bacteria or fungi). Other white spots on their bodies could have been caused by stress.

 

[WDLV]

I would smash it and feed it to the clowns. Poetic justice!

 

[Agathos]

Things have taken a turn for the worse...

Things have taken a turn for the worse...

So I assumed my clown problems were caused by the devilish looking crab, and after removing it it all looked much better. I then acquired a Centropyge argi and a Cryptocentrus cinctus, believing that everything was fine. Things looked good for a while but then the problems returned: small white blotches on the clowns, and now also on the C. argi as well as torn fins on the clowns. I tried controlling the problem with water changes, and the symptoms came and went for a while. Usually all fish were completely symptom free. Then my C. argi became really bad with large white coating on the skin and I became really worried. I quickly bought a new tank to use as a medication tank, but unfortunately did not have the time to get it up and running (it was New Year's Eve). The next morning the C. argi was dead. The remaining fish, the two clowns and the C. cinctus were moved to the medication tank and has been there since.

My plan is to treat with copper, more precisely with the cuprazin remedy, and then let the fish stay in the medication tank for at least six weeks to get rid of all parasites in my main tank.

It started out well, the symptoms seemed to disappear, but now, three days into the medication period it looks much worse than ever. The clowns are full of very small white dots and even my C. cinctus, which has never exhibited any symptoms, have white skin falling off. I fear that I either started treatment too late, or that I am treating against the wrong disease. Can anyone help me out? I have added pictures from today:

 

[MarinaP]

Rock absorbed copper making treatments ineffective. Remove everything but heaters and airstones, measure copper level, add more copper.

 

[Agathos]

Rock absorbed copper making treatments ineffective. Remove everything but heaters and airstones, measure copper level, add more copper.

I have moved the fish to a dedicated treatment tank which contains no rock, only some rubber decoration. The tank also contains a heater and a filter/air pump. I use cuprazin and add the remedy according to the manufacturer's instructions.

 

[MarinaP]

Did you measure copper levels daily?

I am not familiar with cuprazin, cupramine or Seacure is what I use.

Copper has to stay at 0.25mg/l for the duration of the treatment.

 

[Agathos]

Did you measure copper levels daily?

I am not familiar with cuprazin, cupramine or Seacure is what I use.

Copper has to stay at 0.25mg/l for the duration of the treatment.

No, I don't have a copper testing kit. I dose the cuprazin according to the instructions and the volume of my tank. Cuprazin contains copper sulphate (1.7 % w/w), formaldehyde (0.3 % w/w) and malachite green (0.11 % w/w). I added 1.5 mL to my 22 L tank on day 1, day 2 and day 3 (today). I will add 1.5 mL again on day 4, day 6, day 8 and day 10. Then the treatment should be finished. Since the NH3 started to increase I have done 10 % water changes twice, today and yesterday, just before adding the dose of cuprazin. This might have lowered the copper concentration slightly.

According to my calculations the initial copper concentration is 1.16 mg/L right after dosing. I assume this is then gradually decreasing. So 0.25 mg/L does not seem far off.

 

[WDLV]

Did you measure copper levels daily?

I am not familiar with cuprazin, cupramine... is what I use.

Copper has to stay at 0.25mg/l for the duration of the treatment.

+1

I'm not sure what you have on those fish by the pics you posted. Your description made me think brook which I would treat with hypo-salinity (1.009) and Formalin III, but the pics are not consistant with that. It does look to me as though something has attached itself to the skin and detached some time before the pics were taken. Copper was probably as good a guess as any.

 

[Agathos]

The goby was dead this morning but the clowns look all right.