need help..is my clownfish sick?

R

reefertime

New member
hi guys im new to this forum and to the hobby...have had my tank for 2 months now...i searched the forum up and down trying to adress this problem before posting..couldnt figure it out..

:spin2:i bought 2 clown fish and have had them about 1 week now... one of the fish seems to not be interested in food and swims in one place with very little movement. the other fish is swimming up and down and his body sways a lot more just a lot more movement. also the fish that appears to be sick has fins that just kind of stay there the healthy fish has nice healthy fins that stand up and have a lot of vibrance..:hmm3:

is my fish dying?:confused: i sure hope not cuz he is my favorite fish and the last fish that was my favorite did a kamakaze in the middle of the night and i woke up with him dead on my floor.
 
yes i took the water to the fish store and the nitrates and all that are good the guy said. In addition to the 2 clownfish i have a firefish 6 snails 7 little hermit crabs..a condi anenemi and some coral frags(green pollyps, a candy cane coral, and some tree i dont know the name of). also 2 featherdusters....

my salinity is at 1.023....77 temperature.

I have a protein skimmer and a canaster filter, an air pump and little motor thing that circulates water.

also some live rock and live sand..

thats all.

thanks for the reply greatly apreciated. fish seems to be swimming around slightly better but not sure...the fins still look saggy and he wont eat.
 
Give him a couple of days. Just keep your water clean. If your water checks good, not much you can do right now. Don't stress to much, I had a 12" Naso tang for what ever reason stop eating for almost two weeks. He got very skinny. I had him for over a year at that point. I used some selcon and kept the water very clean.

What ever you do, don't just keep putting food in the tank. Your water quality will go down. Just give it some time.
 
have you tried different foods? I've had a shy clownfish before. He would stay against the surface in the corner of the tank all the time. As he grew confident he started going around more and more. That being said, a week without eating isn't scary yet, but I wouldn't let it get to 2 weeks. Try frozen live food (or live food if you LFS has it). Mysis would be a good place to start.
 
In addition to trying different foods I would maybe suggest soaking either the new food or current food with some garlic....
 
Sick clownfish

Sick clownfish

Pictures go along ways in helping to ID a possible problem, as well as all parameters.
 
thanks guys.. apreciate the help my fish endid up dying that same night.. what happened was the fish kept swimming towards the top of the tank kind of sparatically.

so i kept an eye on it and it was a disturbing thing to watch..this is what happened.

it would swim towards the top of the tank and seemed like it kept getting weaker because it would kind of float down and then fight its way back to the top and sink down again.. everytime it tried to swim back towards the top it would float down and it seemed would be getting weaker and weaker till finally he lay on the bottom...then he would get an energy boost and swim back up again only to float down again.. i think you get the point.

finally on the last time it fell right on top of my anenome and the anenome started wrapping its tenticals around it. i watched it because i wasnt sure if it was helping it or hurting it..after a short while i realized MY ANENOME WAS TRYING TO EAT MY CLOWNFISH!!!! so i reached in with a net and knocked him out of the anenome and the clownfish landed on a nearby rock..immediately one of the little hermit crabs swarmed on it and started to try and eat it. so i realized it was a lost cause i took the fish out and flushed her down the toilet.

if anyone knows what happened to my fish i am really curious, everything else in the tank though seems to be doing pretty well. except today i realized that one of my hermit crabs was cut in half and i saw the 2 parts to it but the shell i couldnt find. and i have a featherduster that seems to be coming out too far from the tube and kinda hanging overso the feather part is hanging down instead of sticking straight up. if anyone can tell me how to help y featherduster or explain to my what happened to my fish or how to prevent that from happening i would greatly apreciate it....thanks guys!!!

i tried new foods but didnt soak in garlic..maybe you can explain why to do that i guess ill try that next time.
 
Some fish just don't ship well - and everyone gets a bum that can't be saved once in a while.

When you were at the LFS, did you see what the fish were eating or if it was eating? Some clowns can be quite picky about what they eat, while others eat anything that drops into the tank.

Next time you have trouble enticing a fish to eat, try soaking brine shrimp (alive or frozen) in some garlic, I have yet to find a fish that doesn't tear it up. Brine and garlic really won't provide any nutrition, but it can help entice a fish to eat. Once they are eating the brine well, start throwing some other stuff in there like mysis and plankton, they will eventually start eating it.
 
ok thanks man...now my feather duster just died too... maybe there is something wrong with my water or something i guess i will bring some down to the lfs and see what they say.
 
Its very hard to tell without seeing the fish. Someone could also have squished it with a net at some time and it was doomed from the start.
 
thanks again guys everyone has been very helpful here and i dont take it for granted... keep up the good work. One day i will be an expert at saltwater aquariums and give feedback to return the favor..excellent site. For now though i am just such a newbie.

didnt apear to be slime on it. it really looked sick though..i could mostly tell be the way it was swimming and the way the fins looked..probably would have been oblivious to it but next to the healthy clown it was very apparent.

one last question for now... not really related but do anenomes kill featherdusters if they get close to it? im really considering taking that anenome back to the LFS.
 
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