Clown Fish Not Looking Good. Please Help!

[cunado85]

Hello everybody,

This is my first time posting to the forums. I have been in the hobby for about 8 months. I recently transferred my fish and corals from a 27 gallon cube to a 60 gallon cube.

I cycled the tank properly over about 5 weeks.

Since i have transferred (about a week ago), my cardinal fish died, and my clown fish is not looking good.

I am a little confused because fish that i would consider harder to keep are thriving, and so are my corals:

My fish that are doing fine are:
matted filefish
starfish
diamond goby
yellow watchman goby
shrimp

I noticed today that the clownfish has cloudy eyes (both eyes) and it looks like a white cobb web looking substance is attached to its gills and is tailing behind him when it swims. Its swimming around fine.

Here are my water parameters:
Nitrites: 0.0
Nitrates .75
ammonia: 0
salinity: 1.025
calcium: 440
phosphate: 0.0
temperature: 78.5

I am fairly new to the hobby, and any suggestions would be appreciated!

Any ideas what could be causing these problems?
Could it be possibly just the stress of the move?

Should I treat in any way?

Thank you guys so much for the help! I love reading this forum!

[Newsmyrna80]

Have you added anything new to the tank?

[rc02116]

Check the forums for info regarding possible Brooks treatment for the clown. It sounds like the clown shows Brooks symptoms but hard to tell without pics...If it is indeed Brooks, the clown needs to be treated with Formalin bath as directed *promptly* and I would recommend getting Formalin solution right away ( in case you need it). G' luck and hopefully your fish can recover!

[cunado85]

Thank you both for the input. Unfortunately, the clownfish died today.

RC,

I appreciate your advice - I do believe you were right on your diagnosis as he exhibited all the symptoms.

I will be sure to keep an eye out for this moving forward.

Thanks again for the response!

-Ryan

[biomek]

sorry for the loss. just a heads up, if the clown was in your 60g cube with your other fish, they've been exposed as well. I would make sure you still continue forward with some potential treatment meds.

[cunado85]

sorry for the loss. just a heads up, if the clown was in your 60g cube with your other fish, they've been exposed as well. I would make sure you still continue forward with some potential treatment meds.

Biomek,

Thank you for the response. This forum has proven to be a huge help. I have a lot of different corals in my tank. I am thinking about swapping them to my old tank as a QT.

Before I do this, are there any ways, or test kits, to see if it was indeed Brooklynella. From my research, I couldn't find anything, but I wanted to test and make sure.

Thank you again for the response!!!

-Ryan

[ThRoewer]

From your description and the fact that it was on a clownfish I would say it was with 90% certainty Brooklynella.

Do any other fish show symptoms like heavy breathing or spread gill covers?

If you remove your surviving fish from the DT I recommend to dip them for 45 to 60 minutes in saltwater with formalin and malachite green (Rid-Ich Plus) before putting them into your cleaned and sterilized old tank. Put an airstone into the bucket and aerate well as formalin binds oxygen.

You can either dose the quarantine/hospital tank with malachite green (will turn clear silicone green) or with NLS Ich-Shield (chloroquine phosphate). In the latter case look up the recent threads describing the treatment.

BTW: don't treat the shrimp and the starfish - they can't get infected with Booklynella, velvet or ich and wouldn't survive the treatment.