White strand hanging from clownfish tail

[theawesomeguy]

Hey all,

I got a tank bred Ocellaris clownfish yesterday, acclimated him to my quarantine, and everything seemed to be going alright. That is until now, when I noticed a long, thin, white strand coming from what I thought originally was his tail, but it might be from his lower fins (difficult to tell exactly where its origin is, he keeps moving around). After a little while, the strand fell off and was sucked up by the filter. As far as I can tell, he is healthy otherwise, but I am concerned that this stuff is like extra mucous he is producing because of some unseen infection? Or am I just being a complete and utter moron and the stuff I saw was actually his poop? (in which case I am still concerned, because is poop supposed to be a long white string?)

Thanks!

[leebca]

Thanks for the post. The area you describe sounds like the fish's vent. In human terms, this would be the anus. Look up on the Internet a piciture of a typical marine fish anatomy and look for the place identified as the 'vent.' See if that is where it was coming from.

In general, what you described does seem to be excrement, however it is not normal excrement. Interesting is that it was a tank-bred fish. They shouldn't be having any kind of intestinal problems. You don't have to move the fish, but treat the fish for intestinal disorders according to this post: Strange Excrement from Fish -or- How to be a Super Pooper Snooper

As a matter of curiosity, I'd like to know more. Was this fish kept with wild caught fishes before you acquired it? Was the fish kept on the same water system as wild caught fishes? Just wondering.

[theawesomeguy]

Yeah, it appears like it was coming from his vent.

There were two other fish in the tank I got him from, one was another tank bred Ocellaris and the other was a what I believe to be a sailfin tang, and I have no idea if that was tank bred or not. Now, there were several other tanks around the one I bought the ocellaris from, some of which I'm pretty sure contained wild caught fish (I don't know the "breedability" of all the fish present…), but I don't know if they were isolated systems or if their waters all mixed into one system behind the wall.

[leebca]

Thanks for that info.

An advantage to acquiring tank bred fishes is it doesn't impact the wild population of fishes. Another advantage is supposed to be that the fish you get is disease free. After tank breeding, to put the fish in with wild caught fishes is asking for trouble. The tank bred fishes don't have any strong defenses against the possible diseases the wild fishes carry. It would have been smarter for the place you got it from to have these fish in their own tank, their own water system, alone.

The Tang you mention is not tank bred to my knowledge. There are only about 50 or so fishes commercially available that are tank bred. There is more tank breeding going on, but they are not readily or commercially available yet.