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View Full Version : Help, Injured clownfish!!! Missing tail...


hazard345
12/15/2006, 06:49 PM
First off, here are the specs on my tank. 70g, with 40lbs of crushed coral, 40lbs of live sand, 80lbs of live rock, 2 Clownfish, 1 Whitebelly Damsel, 1 Blue damsel, 1 firefish, and 1 Six Line Wrasse. Several misc corals, such as, 2 maze brain corals, 1 flat brain coral, 1 large cabbage coral, 1 galaxy coral (at least it resembles a red galaxy coral), 1 cup coral, 1 sun coral and some misc star polyps. Around 5 or 6 hermit crabs left (blue and red), 15 assorted snails (turbo, nassarius, cerith, margarita), 1 Cleaner Shrimp, 1 Peppermint Shrimp and 1 Mandarin shrimp, 1 Green Urchin, 1 Tuxedo Urchin, and 1 purple lobster.

Ammonia is 0, nitrite is 0, Nitrate is 1, PH is 8.2, temp is 78ยบ.

Tonight while me and the g/f were eating dinner, she looked at the clown, (while I was looking at the shrimp) and she said, OMG is that clownfish missing his fin?!? So I walked up to the aquarium and looked closer and said yeah, thinking that maybe the purple lobster got ahold of him, but I don't think it was him, because these guys stay at the top of the tank 90% of the time.
Then I walked away to look through my fish medicine, and the only one I could find is melafix. She said he had open wounds like scratches on his one side, and when I walked over, sure enough he did. But one thing is, he's swimming around like nothing had happened to him. So I added about 3/4 of a dose of melafix, and prepaired some water for a water change tomorrow. I noticed that the white belly damsel has been chasing everything in the tank, and he's been changing into adult colors lately (faint black vertical stripes).

Well anyway, I don't have a quarantine tank, nor do I have room to set up a quarantine tank in my house. I've had all my fish together in the aquarium for well over a year and this is the first problem like this I've ever had. I wanted to know, is there anything I can add to the tank that will help the clownfish heal? Was it safe for me to add melafix? The container says for fresh and saltwater. I also realized melafix is an antibacterial remedy so I put in a brand new bio chemzorb pad in my filter to try and pull some of it out. Does anyone else have any suggestions of what I could do, or any advice in general?

hazard345
12/15/2006, 07:12 PM
Basically I want to know was it safe to add melafix to the aquarium with the corals and inverts? What other stuff could I do to help the clownfish heal?

hazard345
12/15/2006, 07:43 PM
Well the lights are out in the aquarium now and him and the other clownfish are up in their normal corner that they stay in during the night. He's acting like he's not injured.

harrisagogetter
12/15/2006, 07:55 PM
weel I don't know about the medicine but there are a lot of strange things that happen to fish in the evening hours. Most clowns do sleep on the bottom or in an anemone if at all possible. Another thing is that most crabs and small hermits are scavengers so it looks like it is time to wathc them late at night to see what happens.


Hope this helps:)
aaron

JokerGirl
12/15/2006, 08:12 PM
The melafix shouldn't hurt the tank but I'd be worried about your clown getting a bacterial infection. Depending on how bad the injury is it may grow back completely and it may not.

I'd keep a very close eye on it and at any inclination that it's not doing well, I'd QT and add an antibiotic like Maracyn-II. You can set up an easy QT with something as simple as a rubbermaid tub and a hangon Aqua-Clear filter. Cheap and should do the trick for a week while it heals.

hazard345
12/15/2006, 09:36 PM
Well the melafix is also for bacterial infections.

I've had several freshwater fish in the past have their tails bitten clean off by other fish and in a few months they all grew back completely

I don't have an anemone in my aquarium, and the clownfish sleep up top above the intate for the protein skimmer. That has been their spot for well over a year and they have not strayed from it, I believe it might have been the whitebelly damsel that did this, because he has become very aggressive lately in his playing with other fish. I'm just worried about the open wounds on the side of the fish.


I have an extra 5g hex aquarium available to set up as a quarantine, but it will take a couple days to get the water dechlorinated. Will that work as a temporary quarantine tank?