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Clownfish Healthcare
As long as you care for your clownfish properly, it should remain in good health. Sufficient space, proper temperature, clean water, and a good diet are important factors in keeping a healthy clownfish, so much so that a well-cared-for fish may never have any health problems at all. Nevertheless, you should be able to handle injury, illness, or other conditions in the event that they occur.
Hospital Tank
Just as you must quarantine a new fish before introducing it to a new tank, so should you quarantine a sick aquarium fish in a hospital tank to prevent it from infecting other fish in its regular tank. The hospital tank need not be large, and it’s best if it has a bare, easy-to-clean setup that denies parasites or other pathogens places to hide and reproduce. Whenever you need to isolate and treat a sick fish, simply fill the hospital tank with water from your aquarium, and you can have it ready in minutes.
Administering Medication
If you ever need to administer medication to a sick fish, do so in a hospital tank. Adding medicine to an aquarium that contains one sick fish among several others can hurt or kill not only the healthy fish but also any live plants in the tank. Also, it’s crucial to use the correct dose when administering medication—if you overmedicate the water, you run the risk of creating stronger bacteria that are resistant to
the medication.
Signs of Illness
Paying regular attention to your fish and their behavior patterns will make you more aware of small changes that may be the first warning signs of illness. If you notice any of the following symptoms in your clownfish, it likely has a health problem.
- Bloating or emaciation
- Folded or clamped fins
- Hanging from the surface of the water
- Lesions, spots, or bumps
- Loss of appetite
- Loss of luster
- Lying on the bottom of the tank
- Pale gills (instead of a healthy red color)
- Ragged fins
- Rubbing against surfaces (“glancing”)
- Slow reaction to disturbances
- Sluggish or aimless swimming
Common Diseases and Conditions
Fish ailments are frequently misdiagnosed, and pet fish are often overmedicated or treated with the wrong medications as a result. Because the proper diagnosis and treatment of many illnesses require clinical tests and professional veterinary care, the cost of such medical therapy can be many times the value of a fish.
Fortunately, clownfish usually don’t contract any of those diseases that require veterinary assistance. The
majority of bouts with illness your clownfish may face will likely involve one of the following ailments.
Brooklynella
A parasitic infection also sometimes known as clownfish disease, brooklynella this condition is most common in maroon clownfish, but it can affect other species as well. Symptoms include a thick, white mucus coating the fish; rapid breathing; loss of appetite; and gasping. In advanced stages, affected fish have faded body coloration.
To treat brooklynella, give the afflicted fish a 15-minute freshwater dip in a separate container of an appropriate size for the fish. You can also remove the affected fish to a hospital tank and administer medicine.
Fin Rot
Fin rot is the product of a bacterial infection in the fins. Clownfish kept in poorly maintained aquariums that have become overrun with bacteria are most likely to experience fin rot. The excess waste products in the tank first lead to fin burn and then fin rot as infections take hold on the already damaged tissue. Once the fins appear burned, it’s likely that the gills are damaged as well, and this can be fatal to a fish.
You can treat fin rot by putting (and keeping) your fish in clean water, but in severe cases, you may need to use commercial medications. Once you halt the damage, the clownfish may be able to regenerate its fins, although they probably won’t completely return to their normal size or coloration.
Hole in the Head Disease (HITH)
HITH, also known as head and lateral line erosion, is common among clownfish that are overfed, kept in crowded quarters, or don’t have their water changed frequently enough.
The lateral line is a narrow canal under the scales that begins behind the gill cover and extends the entire length of the body to the base of the tail. It is made up of small holes, or sensory pores, connecting an underlying gel to the external surface of the fish’s body. These pores are extremely sensitive and can detect the slightest vibration in the water.
HITH causes these sensory pores to become pitted, mostly around the head region. Reversing the pitting is as simple as correcting the environmental cause of the problem, but if left untreated long enough, HITH can eventually lead to massive head erosion. If you notice symptoms of HITH in your clownfish, check the water quality of the aquarium and make any necessary adjustments. Adding more variety to your fish’s diet or including some vitamin supplements may also help remedy HITH.
Saltwater Ich
If your fish has white spots that make the fish look as if it’s been salted, a protozoan called Cryptocaryon irritans, also known as ich, is the most likely culprit. Ich spots are formed by parasites embedded in the fish’s skin. These parasites also attack the gills, where they’re much more difficult to detect and dangerous to the fish. Ich is common and highly curable, but it’s also very contagious and usually fatal if left untreated.
You can often eliminate ich on a fish by providing a freshwater dip, but this does little to treat the aquarium itself. To eliminate ich from the aquarium, reduce the water salinity to 15 parts per thousand (1.011 specific gravity) for no fewer than six days. (Invertebrates and live rock organisms don’t survive this treatment, however, so either remove invertebrates and live rocks to another tank until the treatment is over, or plan to replace them.) The cysts that fall off infested fish—which hatch and release hundreds of new parasites if left untreated—are unable to hatch at this salinity.
You can also buy medications that will eliminate ich, but you must be very careful to add the correct dose to your clownfish’s water, especially in small-volume containers.
Stress
Stress, which can be brought on by many factors, can lead to serious illness or even death in clownfish. When a fish undergoes stress, such as a breakdown in water conditions, its immune system is compromised, and it
becomes susceptible to many illnesses. If your clownfish is not in optimal health, there’s a good chance it’s being exposed to stress in one form or another.
Potential Stress Factors
Most stressors that might affect your fish stem from the tank environment. If your fish is behaving abnormally, evaluate how well you’ve been maintaining your aquarium.
- Are you performing regular water changes?
- Have you been overfeeding your fish, and are you feeding the proper diet for the type of fish you own?
- Is your tank overcrowded? Overcrowding your fish can reduce water quality and place major stress on habitants harassed by aggressors.
- Is the tank of a proper size for the fish you’re keeping?
- If your setup includes one or more filters, are they properly maintained? Poor water quality is a major stressor for any fish.
- If your community includes both shy and aggressive fish, are there ample places in the aquarium for your fish to hide, or are there some that have no shelter and no escape from more antagonistic fish?
- Is the water temperature at the right level?
- Is your tank positioned properly? A tank placed below waist level in an area where people are constantly rushing by, or a tank that receives so much light that there are too few dark hours in which to sleep, can stress your fish.
Water Quality
Nothing matters more to the health of an aquarium fish than regular, proper water changes. Quality filters do an excellent job of purifying water in an aquarium, but changing the water regularly removes impurities that even filters won’t eliminate.
Test your clownfish’s water quality at least once a week. It’s easy to monitor ammonia and nitrite levels, which should remain at zero in your fish’s water at all times. You can purchase a test kit that shows results categorized within ranges of “safe,” “concern,” and “danger.” If you ever get measurable levels of ammonia or nitrite in your clownfish’s water, perform a water change immediately to correct the situation, and step up your changing regimen so that it doesn’t happen again.
How to Change Your Clownfish’s Water
- To change your aquarium’s water, you first need to mix up salt water in your mixing tub at the proper salinity and temperature.
- Fill the mixing tub with water, keeping track of how much water you put in.
- Turn on the powerhead to get the water circulating, and turn on the submersible heater to bring the water to the proper temperature to add to your aquarium.
- Add the amount of salt mix indicated by the manufacturer (usually 1/2 cup for each gallon or 1/4 cup for each liter).
- Wait at least a few hours for the salt to dissolve completely and for the water to be at the correct temperature, then test the water with a hydrometer to make sure that it’s at the correct salinity.
Once you’ve mixed your water and it’s at the correct salinity, you’re ready to add it to your aquarium. You can perform water changes with a bucket and siphon hose, as long as the bucket is made of food-safe plastic and isn’t used for anything other than the aquarium. Siphon the old water out of the tank and into the bucket (or a convenient drain or sink), and refill your aquarium by taking bucketfuls of water from your mixing tub to the tank or by using a fitting that attaches your siphon hose to the powerhead in your mixing tub. When you’re ready to refill the tank, hook the siphon hose to the powerhead and transfer the water in this manner.
| Text & Photos Copyright © 2007 TFH Publications, Inc. | Acknowledgments & Disclaimer |
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