Sick Clowns

[MDP]

Help with new clowns
Grateful for any advice on the following problem.

I am in New Delhi (not exactly the mecca of marine keeping) and have finally managed to get 2 common clowns, ex-singapore and not in great condition. They are in QT along with an allens damsel (seperated by divide).

The SG of the QT tank is 1.009 and the allens damsel has been comfortable at this for 2 weeks, THe clowns went in yesterday after a verylengthy drip acclimation.

One clown, looks great and is swiming around nomrally, the other larger one is not so active, and appears to have some white bumps on the body. I did a F/W dip and this perked her up a bit, but neither is feeding.

I am treating the tankwith Cuprazin as the damsel (which also took 4 weeks to get here) had whitespot and I am going to have an extended QT to ensure no, or as fe as possible, problems inthe main display tank.

How can I get the fish feeding? They refuse frozen brine and marine flake. Food I can feed here is scallop or mashed prawn. Would adding garlic help with a feeding response? Both fish swim straight by food.

Secondly, if this is brook on the larger clown, is Flagyl suitable to use as a cure?? I am haveing great difficulty sourcing Formalin for dips.

Any help gratefully received, my children would be gutted if these fish died and it is so difficult to get a replacement.

Manythanks

Matt

 

[seafansar]

Try breaking up the food into very small pieces and see if adding the garlic helps. It's worth a shot. It's usually hard to get a fish to start eating again if they are even refusing frozen brine shrimp IMO. You could also try live brine if you can get some. Hopefully they'll start eating. Also if you got them yesterday, they may still be getting used to their new surroundings. I had a tang in QT that wouldn't start eating the first two days.

I don't know if Flagyl will cure brook. You might want to post that question in the Fish Disease forum. It sounds like they have ich though. If they have brook, mucus will start building up around their head and they will be breathing heavily from the mucus build up. You could try freshwater dips instead of Formalin if they do indeed have brook.

Hope that helps and the little guys get better!

 

[The Escaped Ape]

Yes, good luck! Hope they're better than they were.

 

[Slakker]

Garlic should help feeding response. Also, do try some frozen Cyclopeeze, it's what brought my pair back from the brink.

I would recommend QTing as few fish at a time as possible, and avoid overlapping QT periods.
This is especially important if the QT is at hypo levels, as fish should be brought down from natural salinity to hypo over no less than 48 hours, IMO/IME.

It doesn't sound much like brook, but if it is hypo and copper will probably not help. Usually the recommended treatment is Formalin dips, I believe.

 

[MDP]

Dear all.

Thanks for the input. I had a panic at the weekend and bought 2 more clowns to put in QT as I thought the first two were not going to make it. However, they are now all feeding really well. I have been treating with cuprazin and Hypo and they look great now. 2 of them are actually getting pretty fat! As suggested above, I basically put lots of frozen brine in so that there was food blowing round the tank for 2 or 3 mins, eventually the fish started lunging at it and then taking it in. Meant huge water changes and monitoring of copper levels, but all worth it, theyare now eating Hikari granulated food.

Going to raise salinity over the coming week and transfer 2 fish into the newly finished nano (might even do a build thread in the nano section). Not sure what to do with the 2 extra clowns.

MDP

 

[The Escaped Ape]

Try and persuade the wife that what the kids really need is a tank of their own.