Please help an amature with some questions about my clowns and behavior.

[krafty]

Hi,

I am an amateur. I have had this 125gal for about 5 months now.

The livestock is as follows:

3 Green Chromis
2 Misbar Clowns
1 Brown (Scopas) Tang
Various Discosoma Mushrooms
Various polyps
1 Brittle Star
Many Snails/Hermit Crabs
2 Coral Banded Shrimp

The levels are as follows:

pH: 8.3
Nitrites: 0
Ammonia: < .25ppm but not completely undetectable
Nitrate: 0
Calcium: 480

Two days ago I began to suspect that my Tang had Ich. My reasoning for this was that he has tiny (size of the point of a needle) white dots in a few places near his dorsal (rear?) fin and across the back half of his body. I did a bunch of reading on here and in several books and the more I read about the symptoms of ich the less I think he has it. He is not gilling (breathing rapidly), he is not flashing on the rocks or the sand, he eats well (mysis/blood worms/nori) and there are no dots around his gills. I have a QT tank ready to set up if necessary however.

I had pretty much discounted the possibility of ich or some other disease being in the tank until this morning when I observed my clowns.

My clowns host in a rock covered with hairy mushrooms. I have a mail and a female (female is much larger). Today I observed the female and she is breathing very rapidly. She is also aggressive towards the male when he comes near the rock of mushrooms. The male seems to be slightly aggressive towards the chromis but not the tang (who is much larger). The female stays embedded in the mushrooms most of the time. She will come out for food which they both eat energetically. I observed the female flashing (rubbing her gill area) on the sand bed next to the mushroom rock today. She will also appear to yawn occasionally after which she resumes the rapid breathing. Within the past hour the male has started to convulse as if he were having a seizure. He has done this several times.

I am not sure what to make of this. Neither clown shows signs of the the white specks.

Is this indicative of ich? Is it possible that they are spawning? I only say that because of the females aggressiveness towards the male and his aggressiveness towards the smaller chromis.

I am going to post this in this forum and also the clown forum and hopefully I will get some answers.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Josh

 

[Sk8r]

Your tang may have a light case of ich. The clowns are probably courting. This shivering behavior is part of it. You've got a Situation, because if you disturb the clowns to pull them all to qt, that's a problem, at least for the present. Frankly, in that large a tank, I'd give it a few days feeding garlic and see if the tang quietly throws off his problem. Your params are good, the infestation probably isn't thick, and they might tough it out. Fish that have once thrown the parasite off become a little more resistent to it, but don't add any new fish for the next month or so---you've got enough going on without getting some fish in that's going to be susceptible and help the stuff reproduce.