coral trouble and clown fish death

[masta_2009]

Bought Our 1st 3 pieces of coral last week but looks like one has died already- the puslating xena (sp) it was fine until this (see picture) floated around the tank and landed on it. ( ithink it might have stung it but not sure what it is or even if it is stingy)

can anyone identify this? there are two in the tank and they came with the xena.

Also we got our 1st clown fish for my fiances birthday on the 24th of August. It was a wild caught one and I asked in the shop if it was eating ok the feller said it was. However we got it home and acclimatised it over 4 hours and left it in the dark for 24 hours but it wouldnt eat the food he gave us. (flake food) We tried frozen Mysis, frozen brineshrimp and krill, and live brinseshrimp but it was very hard to entice him to eat at all. Then 2 days ago it looked to develop a little speck of white fluff on its head.I turned the lights off and checked on him yesterday the white fluff had quadroupled in size and he was gasping heavily (i also checked the symptoms online and thought it sounded like clown fish disease especially the swiftness the disease took hold. I gave him a fresh water dip to buy him some more time but today he was dead.)

What can i do next? My fiancee is very upset and i'm annoyed i wasn't better prepared to deal with his fishy illness. (i have a small quarenteen tank but didnt have any formaldahide to bathe him in.)

we only have a small tank and really only want a pair of clown fish- how long should we wait before thinking about getting another fish? (ive read that if it was clownfish disease the parasites need a host to survive- if we continue to do 10% water changes weekly can we consider getting 1 in a months time?)

Are we better getting a tank bred fish as oppsed to wild caught?


any advice would be appreciated.

[Tetley]

Hi,

Some bad luck IMO.

The Xenia in some tanks will be fine, in others will just not do well.

It sounds like your clown fish had a disease (a little hard to say which one, but safe to say was already present when you purchased it)

Can you give us a full run down on current water results?

Dont add anything for the moment, just ensure temp and sg are correct.

Once we have your water results, we will be in a better position to advise,

ATB

NB 4 hours to acclimatise a fish is far to much (20/30 minutes would have been ample).

If in doubt speak to lilyann, she can advise.

[masta_2009]

lillyann came round and said she thought the fish had brought the disease with it.

anyidea what that coral is in the pic?

it moves around the tank and usually gets stuck in the filter. does is sting other coral?
will get water stats asap.

[Tetley]

lillyann came round and said she thought the fish had brought the disease with it.

anyidea what that coral is in the pic?

it moves around the tank and usually gets stuck in the filter. does is sting other coral?
will get water stats asap.

It may be a piece of Xenia. It wont sting other corals. See if you can gently wedge it between two rocks (you may be lucky and it will re-attach).

If you purchased your clown from the place begining with "V", then I would not be surprised if it was diseased.

Slow down, get your water right first. If you want to chat PM me your e-mail addy - we can chat on MSN tomorrow night.

ATB

[Tom2006]

Sorry to hear about your troubles. How big is your tank? Could it be that you might have overfed the clown in an effort to get it to eat? This is a common problem, most people do it at some point, I know I did when I started out with freshwater tropicals.

The description of the disease sounds like it could have been some form of fungal infection. This is normally a secondary illness and often caused by poor water conditions, hence why I asked about how much you fed?

Keep the faith, sadly the best marine aquarists lose fish for many reasons. The trick is to battle through it :)

[Kev]

New system? Maybe not finished cycling?

[masta_2009]

the sytem has been running for over 2 months. I have done everything by the book as far as i'm aware and didnt add the clown until i was confident the water levels were fine.

I was working today so my fiancee took a water sample to the lfs and showed the marine guy the pictures of the 'thing' i thought had killed the xena and he identified it as some sort of a sea slug (had i gone i'd have found out the species name etc..but unfortunately i dont have it)- it has tentacles and seems to crawl along the glass. He advised her to get rid of it if we intend to keep coral. He also said that our choice of starter corals was fine-

finger coral and green mushrooms- although he did say
pulsating xena can be tempremental.

As for the water sample water sample he said all our stats were fine. (i dont know what they are as my fiancee didnt write them down) In fact he said they were perfect apart from ammonia which was a little high but this is probably due to the dead fish being in the tank a while.

The tank is a resun 400ts it holds approx 12.5 gallons and comes with skimmer etc twin t5 lights. I have a scahet of carbon and some purigen in the filter. I have 6.5 kg of grade A live cured rock. 2 hermit crabs (bluelegged) 2 turbo snails and a cleaner shrimp all fine and healthy. They had been put into the tank gradually.

The lfs guy said it sounded to him that the clown must have brought the disease with him and he agreed it sounded like CFD but he said he couldnt be certain unless we took the dead fish to him (it wasn't the same lfs i got him from by the way and i've been advised by people not to get fish from V anymore) He advised us to continue doing regular water changes and go back in a month to test the water again. He said we'd be ok to get another clown in a month or so.

ive read the argument on here about wild vs tank bred what does anyone advise?

I will post some pictures laterof the 2 coral i have left and a clearer picture of the unitentified slug thing so someone can hopefully advise me what to do with it. (well them as there are actually 2)

I will also post a pic of my tank seeing as i've not posted one yet if anyone wants to see our 1st venture into the dark side.

He said we could get some more coral now

[ChrisBFish]

Sorry to hear about your problems... I don't know much about sea slugs/nudibranchs, but conventional wisdom(!) seems to say that they often look like their prey/food items. If the two you have appeared when you got your xenia and look a bit like the stuff, then my best guess would be that's where they came from and what they eat. However, I don't know anything for sure, and am open to correction from Them What Know! :)

As far as clowns are concerned, personally I'd always go for tank bred - as for any fish where this is an option. No impact on wild stock, and already used to aquarium conditions - seems simple to me, but I know it's all a matter of opinion...

HTH

:)

[masta_2009]

soooooooooo


after 2 months with no fish and just coral i'm finally ready to try again with a clown fish (tank bread i might add)

as next week is half term i will be looking to add a clown fish and trying again...

i'm also after some small frags for my tank if anyone has anythingcolourful and small for sale pm me please with pics and a price.

[Zeus]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about this.

4 hours is a very long time to acclimatise a fish especially in the bag. It is possible he suffered from ammonia poisoning. The white lump may well have been a bacterial infection, a side effect of his damaged immune system and the rapid breathing due to gill burn again from the ammonia. Was his breathing always fast?

Of course there is always the possibility of poisioning from cyanide collection.

Although Brooklynella can't be ruled out i suspect that if he had Brook he wouldn't have lasted 2 months.

You are always better off with tank bred when available, these fish are much hardier and are accustomed to "dead" food.

HTH
Campbell

Edit: Sorry, scratch the 2 months comment, didn't see the date on the original post, still Brook kills in 36 to 48 hours so I am thinking it wasn't Brook.