Clown fish with open mouth!

[mrhasan]

Hello,

I have two o. clowns in my 20long. Just few days back, I noticed that one of my clown has his mouth open and breathing heavily (opening and closing, but not fully, the mouth rapidly). I can't seem to notice any sort of ich/infection near the gill. My water parameters are at 0 (amo, nitri, nitra) and I feed them spectra flake. I went through several forum and found that it might be an issue of jaw hyper-extension and people suggest an minor adjustment to the fish through anesthesia (which I am not comfortable with).

So did anyone experience this? What should I do? Should I just let it heal by itself?

[BlueTang<3]

Do you have any pictures?

[mrhasan]

Don't have any right now but I will post some once I go back home.

[mrhasan]

Here is the pic.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/5894/dsc00247it.jpg

[mrhasan]

I don't think he will survive...he is kind of floating around now :(

[BlueTang<3]

Hard to tell from the picture, but how old is the setup what o you have in there. Could it be a low oxygen issue?

[mrhasan]

My system is around a month old. I had the start up quick because I used fully cured live rock and hence started adding bioload up. I got a brittle, 2 o. clowns, 1 firefish and 2 turbos along with some frags. The other fishes are doing fine.

I don't thing its a issue of oxygen since I have enough aeration (2 aquon 20 HOBs, 1 rio nano skimmer and a 110gph ph).

I guess this is the common issue of getting a wild caught fish :( I shouldn't have got him when I heard that he was wild :(

[gregzz4]

Just throwin it out there, but it could be burnt gills from ammonia

[mrhasan]

Yah that could have been a possibility but my system doesn't have ammonia (got over with the spike already) and I don't overfeed the system (the other clown eats directly from my hand).

[daniella3d]

it could be brooklynella and if it is so, the others will probably follow. QT everything is the best way to make sure the fish are healthy.

Paraguard is a good medicine against brooklynella. it is a common disease of wild cought clownfish. Getting tank raised clown is better than getting wild cought. There are some really nice pattern available like the black ice and snow flake, picasso etc....Even the regular type are available as tank raised but with the designer clownfish at least you are sure they are tank raised.

[mrhasan]

Yah no more wild caught ones (the price and the color got me into it). But it don't think its brooklynella since there's no such symptoms. Even at the 4/5th day, there is no noticeable gill infection. I guess I will just wait for a couple more days and just release it from its pain :sad: