Question About Clownfish

[alizadeh]

Hi,

I have been having an ongoing problem with a true percula clownfish. First, a little history:

I am new to the hobby, and about four months ago, I bought a used 30 gallon tank, that was up and running. The tank is a reef, but only has some yellow and green button polyps. It has about 40 lbs of live rock. The only inhabitant when I bought it was a firefish.

The tank I bought was not in the best of conditions with the previous owner clearly not spending enough time on maintaining it well. For example, the first time I tested the water, the nitrate was 80 ppm! And I'm guessing it had been like that for quite a while. But the ammonia, and nitrite have always been 0.

As I was a complete newbie it also took me a while to start to figure things out. After about a month, I had the nitrate down to about 10 ppm, but have never been able to bring it lower.

By the way, I started with tap water, but for the past month have been only using RO water.

Eventually, after a month and a half (10 weeks ago), I decided to buy my first fish. I picked up a tank bred true percula clownfish. I didn't have a hospital tank at the time, so I couldn't quarantine. For two weeks, the clownfish seemed healthy, and ate well. The problem I had with him was that he would only take frozen brine shrimp which is what the LFS told me that he had always fed. The only occasion I got him to take some frozen mysis was when I had come back from vacation after 3 days, and I guess he was very hungry. I did not have any additives when I got him, but soon started using Kent Zoe, and later Selcon.

After 2 weeks, I noticed some black spots on the body of the clownfish. At first there where only 3-4 spots, but after a couple days there were more. I researched on the web, and concluded it was probably black itch. When I found the clownfish scratching himself against a rock at night, I was more convinced.

So I setup a hospital tank and moved the fish. I administered freshwater dips with methaline blue every 3 days according to the method on reefland. In fact the fish responded pretty well to the dips, and usually I would continue the dip for around 15 minutes. After the dips, I would find many small black grains of different sizes in the dip water. So I thought this was working, but was surprised to always find black spots remaining on the clownfish. Although they had surely decreased. I even gave him two formalin dips (with 3 days in between), for around 50 minutes. I could visibly see the fish very weak after the formalin dips, and didn't find nearly as many of the residue black things in the dip water after a formalin dip, compared to the freshwater dip. I also treated the tank with maracyn 2 for 5 days.

Another big problem I had during this treatment, was that the hospital tank was going through a cycle, even though I had kept a sponge for the filter running in my main tank. I tried to keep the toxin level low by water changes each day, or once in two days, and using amquel. But unfortunately, this was a very busy work period for me, so for a period of 10-12 days, sometimes the ammonia level did increase to 1 ppm.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the clownfish has been in the hospital tank for about 5 weeks now. and for the past 3 weeks, there have been no problems with the tank cycle. Water parameters are fine: ammonia, nitrite 0, nitrate < 10. Ph 8.1-8.4. The fish is actually doing pretty well in general. He eats well. I have been feading him formula 1 pellets, and brine shrimp enriched with selcon. There are much fewer spots on him. But still, there are a few black spots.

I wanted to ask, is it possible that the tubellerian worms (assuming that is what this has been), could have survived two formalin baths, and many (at least 8) freshwater dips?

I have not been doing any more dips for the last two weeks. I think I need to re-evaluate what this could be.

Sorry for the long post. I thought it would help to give as much information as I can.


Thanks,
Mohammad

[leebca]

WELCOME TO REEFLAND

Starting a bit early on I can see a few concerns. Some I may be guessing at, so take what you think applies.

If the Firefish is still in the aquarium, then it is likely overstocked. The two Anemonefishes would be the limit to that sized aquarium.

Fish in a reef tank usually don't make for a great home for invertebrate corals. The fish produce too much wastes. So your nitrates may not ever drop really low.

Black Ich is an interesting group of parasites. The black you see is not the parasite but a bit of blood that the parasite has caused to hemorrhage. So when you give the fish a dip, there is no 'black things' to see in the dip water. The parasites that cause Black Ich are not visible with the unaided human eye.

Black Ich presents itself as tiny, pin-prick sized dots. About the size or smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. These dots are very fine and distinct, clear.

Another condition which causes black spots on Anemonefishes is hypermelenization. These spots are larger and fuzzy or less distinct. These are caused by the fish getting stung or hurt by one or more invertebrate (corals) in the tank. These are like mosquito 'bites' and are uncomfortable to the fish. In this case, the fish must be separated from the causing source either by removing the fish or removing the offending invertebrate. Once separated, the fish should go back to a clean skin (no spots) providing the fish has a great diet.

Lastly, this fish is not getting the proper nutrition it needs. You'll need to work on that if you want to keep these fishes alive for very long.

I hope the above has helped.

[alizadeh]

Hi Lee,

Thanks a lot for your quick reply. I had a couple questions/comments:

1) From what you mentioned about black itch not leaving any visible signs in the dip water, I guess this might not have been black itch. But I definitely have found many black pecks and grains of varying sizes after a freshwater dip. What do you think these might be? I'm guessing hypermelenization also wouldn't leave anything in the dip water. Could it be some other kind of worm?

2) I have tried very hard to get this fish to take anything but frozen brine shrimp. Initially he would not eat anything else. Anytime I tried some mysis, he would take some, and always immediately spit it out. He has now begun accepting formula 1 pellets, and he does also eat cyclops. But he doesn't seem to eat any of these with nearly as much appetite as he has for brine shrimp. I have continued feeding him brine shrimp fortified with selcon. Do you think I should stop feeding him brine altogether, and keep trying to feed him mysis (or something else) until he takes it?

Thanks again for all the help.

[leebca]

1) Well, it still isn't clear what kind of black spots you were seeing on the fish -- tiny, distinct, or blurry patches of spots as large or larger than this letter O.

Regarding the dip water -- before you put the fish in the water, did you inspect it and look for things that were settling out in the water? In other words, are you sure those specs didn't come from the water, the Methylene Blue, and/or the container? Until those specs are inspected under a microscope, there is no way for me to say much about them. If you didn't think to check the bath water before the dip, then there is most likely the chance there was some dirt in the water, dirty container or the Methylene Blue was going bad and precipitating. If you used baking soda to alter the pH of the bath water, then it may have been a source of contamination, too.

Regarding your guess that Hyper-Melaninization wouldn't leave black specks in the water -- you are correct.

2) A fish that is 'stuck' eating just a limited group of foods needs to be treated a little bit like a fish that isn't eating at all, and a little bit like a fish you are trying to get the right kinds of foods. Read through these posts to give you some ideas on how to encourage the fish to expand its diet:
http://www.reefland.com/forum/marine...-eat-tips.html
and
Food Presentation

For the right kinds of foods, you want to read this post:
Feeding Marine Fish and Fish Nutrition

Regarding cutting the fish off from what it does eat -- no. Just start blending it with other foods. See the above posts for ideas.

Good luck!

[alizadeh]

Thanks for the response Lee. The black spots are tiny and distinct. I have to say, there are now very few of them compared to before I had done the dips. But I'm pretty sure this fish is suffering from something. Today, I found him scratching against a pot I have for him in the hospital tank. He seems to be mainly scratching his lower surface, around his underbelly. He lowers himself so his touching the pot, and than shakes himself vigorously. I see no other visible signs of a parasite. He does not appear lethargic or anything. I did once catch him opening his mouth wide open momentarily.

I really want to help this fish out. I wonder whether he has some parasite that was partially eradicated by the freshwater/formalin dips, which is why I saw him improve over the past month. But maybe the parasite has now infected the hospital tank, and since I haven't been doing any treatments in the past 2 weeks, the fish is again infected and that's why he started scratching again.

Do you think I should use hyposalinity for the hospital tank? Or would you recommend a general parasite treatment like copper? I would appreciate any advice.

[leebca]

It's hard to recommend a treatment without having a reasonable diagnosis.

Hyposalinity really is about only good for one parasite (or a very small group of parasites led by the most common one, Marine Ich. Symptoms and appearance described doesn't fit this.

The copper treatment does address a larger group of parasites, but still only a select number of them. None of the symptoms or appearances you've described so far fit for those parasites. Thus, I don't think a copper treatment would be of value.

From what has been reported so far, the freshwater dip and perhaps the Formalin bath has made an improvement.

The most reasonable and best suggestion I could give at this point is to give 4 more freshwater baths, 3 days apart. The 15 minutes in the bath is a good number to stick with as long as the fish will tolerate it.