Spots on clownfish

Hey guys I came home yesterday and noticed these spots on my clownfish and something id almost say growing? on his head. He would move from just swimming on the sand but yet he ate when I fed everyone. This morning he was briefly swimming around. I tried to get a pic of this and see if yall could tell me what it was. I tested the ammonia it was right around .50 (the third color on my test kit).

 

Looks like a rough case of ick. Ammonia is waaaay too high. Your clowns appear to be in rough shape. The faded colors are another indicator of poor health.

You from N. Louisiana area?

 

Beat me to it, Ich is the spots. The "thing growing on his head" could be hole in the head. HITH is a slow moving problem usually and can be treated but mainly you should focus on fixing the water parameters by doing water changes maybe a 50% change and doing treatments for the ich and go from there. I can't really tell it's HITH for sure from the picture but ich is definitely present.

 

I think there might be other underlying issues here . . .
I took a read through your posted threads and to me, it would seem that this tank is barely a month old. If that is the case, it may not be fully cycled, hence the ammonia reading that is quite high. Any ammonia reading over 0 is too high. What are your other parameters? Nitrates? Nitrites? dKh? Calcium? Mag? pH? Temp? Salinity?

I also see that you have a tang and "a few anemones" in the tank - is this true?
If so it would be a bit early to be adding tangs, and certainly too early to add anemones. If you do indeed have nems (especially multiple nems) there is a chance that one of them has perished and is giving you an ammonia spike - that is assuming the ammonia is not coming at least in part from the cycling of the tank.

Sounds like the best course of action for you is to first and foremost stop any additions to the tank until everything stabilizes. Next, it's a good idea to get a full understanding of your water parameters (listed above) to know how to proceed. Large (30% or so) water changes 2x a week will help with water quality - but longer term solutions in terms of proper maintenance and patience need to be exercised to avoid a repeat down the road.

 

I'm in my 9th week right now. I'll have all my parameters this afternoon. I tested for ammonia soon as I saw the problem. I do have two small anemones. They never seem to have a problem. They always eat and never seem to move to much and are always fully bloomed. My salinity was .023 and I've been doing a water change every saturday.

I'm very open to any suggestions to help saves these guys or to go forward with having a successful tank.

Thanks!

 

9 weeks is still a bit early for that many fish plus nems IMHO.
Did you add the fish right away to the tank? Or did you verify the cycle was complete by testing for nitrite, nitrate, and ammonia and then add fish?

Knowing the rest of the parameters will help.

A salinity of 1.023 is also low. You should shoot for 1.025-1.026. Low salinity can be stressful to tank inhabitants.

If you are doing regular water changes and you still have high ammonia it could mean that the tank was never cycled properly, or something has died in your system. Continuing to do water changes, running carbon, and monitoring your system parameters along with making no new additions hopefully will put you on the right track.

 

I added the fish last, I took a water sample to my lfs and they said it passed the test to add fish. I'll get the rest of my parameters this evening when I return home from work. I'll continue to do water changers as normal, at this point though what should my water change consist of. More RO Fresh or Salt? I'm not going to put anything else in the tank until im sure that i'm not gonna stress them out and hurt them.

 

Not sure what you mean by this.

If you are doing a water change it should be done with clean fresh saltwater made FROM RO/DI water. You should also mix the next batch a say 1.027 to start to bring your system salinity up a little bit. Doing a water change with a more saline water will slowly bring your salinity up and should help to improve system health.

 

This could be where I have been going wrong. I've been using RO/DI freshwater with the water changes. Hence my lower salinity level, correct?

 

+1

Just don't try to bring it all the way up at one time. Big swings are definitely not good.

As for the ich, you really need to go get something to treat it. I would take your fish out of the display tank, give them a freshwater dip in RO/DI water for about 5 minutes and then quarantine your fish for treatment. The reason is that most ich cures contain copper which is essentially fatal for inverts. If you have (or ever plan to have) any inverts, do not dose the tank directly.

For the quaratine, you will need to keep the display tank fish free for about 8 weeks. This will cause the parasites to starve and any eggs to hatch and then starve too. Then you can add the fish back in.