Ocellaris clown on the sand and gasping

[saltcreepy]

I have a pair of tiny 1 inch ocellaris clowns which I added to a community consisting of a sailfin tang, purple tang, 2 yellow tangs, 2 regal tangs, banana wrasse, coral beauty and cleaner wrasse about a month ago. Both have being doing well, constantly swimming around in the flow produced by my Tunze Streams. However a couple of days ago, one of them was sitting on the sand respiring rapidly. Once I fed the tank, it sprung to life and was then seen swimming around happily. Then a few hours ago it was back on the sand. I can't see any external signs of disease such as whitespot. Can anyone help?
Tank: 165gal, zero ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, phospate, pH 8.3, temp 25.5oC, SG 1.023. I use a skimmer, carbon reactor and 60W UV unit.

 

[rkelman]

Running low on dissolved oxygen maybe? What kind of flow do you have? I would have thought the tangs would have exhibited problems before a clown but you never know.

 

[Ayanami]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8935892#post8935892 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rkelman
I would have thought the tangs would have exhibited problems before a clown but you never know.

My thoughts exactly. Does it seem to have a very thin coat of slime on it's sides? I'm thinking maybe brook but, after having the clown in the tank for a month it seems highly unlikely. Any tankmate aggression that u have noticed? Got any pics of the clown?

Jess

 

[saltcreepy]

Just checked oxygen & it's around 7mg/l, which according to the chart is around 100% saturation...

 

[saltcreepy]

No tankmate aggression observed during daytimes. Not even from the other clown.
I just fed the tank and this time the sick clown didn't want to move to get any food.

 

[Ayanami]

hmmm I don't see anything external from the pic. Maybe an internal infection or something. Does it have coudy eyes?

Jess

 

[saltcreepy]

Hi, no cloudy eyes either, although a bit hard to tell for sure as it's only about an inch long. I would imagine this is a tank bred specimen, and I've heard they sometimes get into trouble with parasites and diseases when they are in a tank with live rock and wild caught fish. Maybe that's what has happened here...

 

[Reef4Fun]

maybe try to get hiim to eat some garlic soaked food, garlic usually intices them to eat and helps build up immune

 

[keefsama2003]

Oxygen i moved my pair of B&W ocellaris to their own 30gal cube and they seemed fine for 2 days then last night they were doing the same thing you described and i freaked out as these were sold to me as WC pair and im trying to get them to spawn i almost took them out and put them back to my old tank when i decided to put my limewood airstone to the bottom of the tank held down with a piece of rock and almost immediately their respiration started to slow down back to normal and they started to situp on the sand and then they started moving around ok

i checked this morning before i went to work and they look back to normal.

i completely forgot that in my 300 i have a ton of water splashing around in my sump and my closed loop as a few outlets that draw in O2 as well so this new tank didnt have that on the surface.

If you can add a few air stones or get something with light splashing into the tank as these are ways to introduce more O2

 

[ocellaris13]

I had a similar issue with one of my clowns that ended up spreading to other fish in my tank. I thought it was disease, maybe lateral line syndrome? But after speaking w/ a local shop owner, he asked if I had any old pumps or heaters in my tank. He said they could bleed electrical current into the water which could cause problems w/ the lateral lines in my fish. Sure enough, I was checking my equipment and while I had my hand in my sump near the heater chamber, I was shocked by electricity. Turns out I had a bad heater that was putting the current into the water and slowly electrocuting the fish. I lost a few from this incident, but after putting in a new heater, the problem was solved. Very tricky deal, I was racking my brain thinking it was disease while my fish were all slowly dying.

 

[TOURKID]

I personally think it is exibiting all the signs of a bacterial infection easy to treat, but you'll need a qt.

After qt is set up, buy maracyn 2 for saltwater. double the dose!!! so if its a ten gal tank, you'll treat 2 tabs the first day, then 1 tab a day for the rest of treatment.

My clown got one after a month or so in the reef, cant really explain why it happens, but youll see heavy breathing, no eatting, very lethargic, eventually it can lead to fin rot, cheek swelling and stringy poop (from stress and not eatting) not internal parasites. Im going to PM you in a second.