Not eating + rapid breathing = ?

[Chelsey]

I bought a bonded pair of snowflake clowns on Friday, only to have the male jump and subsequently die on Saturday. I bought another snowflake Saturday and introduced him to the female. They were (until an hour ago) in a small critter keeper that was in my cube tank, they are now in their own 28 gallon nano. The female is showing the male who is boss (but not fin nipping or being overly aggressive) and the male is shivering in submission.

Here's where I get concerned: The male's breathing rate is relatively fast, at least faster than the female's. He is also not eating. I realize that I've only had him since Saturday, but as you can imagine he was not cheap and I'd rather not have this one die too. Is he not eating and breathing faster because he's stressed from the female showing her dominance and the less than ideal quarters he was until very recently housed in, or is there something wrong?

Both fish had been at the LFS for a while (a month +1 week) and they were both eating at the store. The only other fish that the male snowflake was housed with were two pairs of picassos. I was also talking to a few people and they suggested perhaps ammonia toxicity from not having any flow through the critter keeper, but how quickly will he recover from that?

I moved the pair of clowns into their nano cube and immediately they were swimming around more. However, the male has now slowed in activity while the female is still swimming around quite a bit. I just tried feeding them the EXACT food that they were fed at the LFS, and while the female gorged herself I don't think the male at a single piece of mysis The male's breathing rate hasn't really changed either, unfortunately. He's still showing no signs of disease other than fast breathing rate and not eating. If he's not showing any symptoms how do I treat and what do I treat for?


Thanks in advance for any help that you can give me. As you can tell I'm quite distraught over this whole ordeal.

 

[kinlayan]

the male is clearly stressed so i would watch if he is being bullied, make sure your water quality is excellent no ammonia,nitrite and very low nitrate, if he has a disease it may only be in the gills and you may not see visble signs until it is to late .

The treatment for the disease can only be given once you know what you dealing with, right now you need to reduce stress and see if that gets him feeding again, try also to spike some food with garlic it may cause a better feeding response.

hope this helps

 

[Chelsey]

I've been watching him like a hawk and I think he's breathing normally. The female is not breathing much slower than he is and I went and looked at my picasso clowns which are about the same size (in a different tank, I've had them for 3 months) and they're breathing at the same rate. I may just be being paranoid, but I'm not imagining the not eating. He did swim up to a pellet of ORA glow tonight though, so perhaps he's getting hungry.

As a preventative measure (out of desperation) I dosed the tank with Prazipro, though it was a lower dose than recommended. I'm not scheduled to do a massive water change until Sunday but I'll probably end up doing at least a 10 gallon WC Friday night since I've been trying so hard to get him to eat.