need some help with my clowns

[auto_loader]

I noticed last night that one of my clowns had a small sore close to the bottom of its gill and the other one had a bite out of its tail so I figured they were fighting. This morning I notice the one with the bite near is tail also has a few white raise bumps now.

Ive never dealt with fish getting sick before so I need some help to treat this properly. Here is a picture of the problem. I really dont want to lose these clowns so please if anyone knows what this is I could use some good advice.
Mike

 

[shabreeson]

looks like ich or maybe a true fungus. I have had good results doing freshwater dips with my clowns. if you do decide to do a freshwater dip do plenty of research. if you want to use medicine I would recomend formalin, because it is what live aquaria uses(use it in a quarentine tank). if you want to be moderately sure you no longer have the parisite in your tank then treat and quarentine just the clowns for 8 weeks, if you want to be absolutely sure then treat the clownfish until there are no visible signs then quarentine all of your fish in the tank for 8 weeks(in order to break the ich life cycle). the later option is recomended in case one of your fish gets injured in the future.

 

[auto_loader]

Im pretty sure its ich now. Yesterday afternoon the 3 bumps were gone and both looked better. Now this morning both fish have similar looking areas showing up. One of them looks to be breathing heavier. I set up a hospital tank and did a freswater bath on them. They seem to made it through that OK. I also got some formalin which I will probably treat them with. I was inspecting my royal gramma which is in a different tank but part of the same system. It has white flecks on its fins, so thats when I concluded that ich was the problem. Now I need to figure out how to get the gramma out of there and in QT also. Hopefully all goes well.

 

[shabreeson]

good luck, my gramma will stay in its rock even if I slowly take the rock out.
you might think about getting a cleaner shrimp, just in case ich finds its way back in the tank

 

[meg]

Just when you think you have it all figured out......
I have had a couple of times when I has some ich in my system as well. Since it had been up and running for years I left eveything alone, checked water quality and let the tank sort of take care it. It went away after a few times of showing up and going away.
When my system was newer and I was new at it, I tried fresh water baths and all the "remedies" without much luck.
Good luck. Hope all goes well.
Meg

 

[shabreeson]

^^^^ that is why I would recommend doing an 8 week quarantine of all the fish in the system, so it doesn't pop up again. freshwater baths are just used to relieve the immediate symptoms,only if you are lucky does it cure it for good
.

 

[auto_loader]

So far so good.
The clowns didnt eat for a couple days after I put them in QT. They do look better now and both are eating again. I stopped the medication, did a water change and started carbon filteron the QT today.
I still need to figure out how to get the gramma out of there.

 

[shabreeson]

yeah I thought that was going to be a problem. make sure you do the full recommended time for the medication. if you don't do it long enough you could be making a resistant strain. plenty of feedings and water changes and you should be in the clear...except for that pesky gramma of course.:rollface: