Percula clown - please eat.

[stig]

Hey, so does anyone have a good name for me??
My real name seems so boring.
Anyway, I got a 2-inch percula clown 5 days ago and....he's refusing to eat (he tastes the food or swims near it but that's as far as he goes), his s**t is white, he spends most of his time in the corner although he has these active spells where he'll happily swim around. I've tried feeding him flakes, small red and green capsules and dried b-shrimp and he won't touch any of it.
Any ideas???????????
Clowns have really soft skin so he got the characteristic white spots right off. A 1-degree increase in temp cured that but how do I chill this guy out. He's not harassed at all. Maybe he's just lazy but I figure he should eat. Should I just chill out and wait till he gets hungry enough?

 

[beth]

By saying he got the white spot, do you mean ick? If so, I doubt that a temp increase fully cured the fish. Pay a bit more attention to this.
As for the food you are offering...yuk. Get some fronzen brine, and if he still refuses this, then assume he's sick. Clownfish love to eat and will usually happily greet you when he sees you coming with the chow. If the brine shimp don't work, and he really isn't sick, try offering his food [again frozen brine] in a sringe. Put the sringe right up to him and discharge the food at him.

 

[sod]

you should take the food and try to make it smaller like crshing it between your finger it worked for mine

 

[beth]

clowns are hardy eaters...if he won't eat a good quality fronzen brine shrimp, then return to the disease theory....or look for other stressors [like being harrassed]. And as to harrassment, sometimes this doesn't happen til the lights go off at night. So, while things may be calm when you're watching with the lights on, it may be some real problems going on while you're asleep in the night! Good luck!

 

[stig]

Thanks for the advice, guys.
He ate the frozen brine shrimp.
2 questions, if I may.....
(1) I can't feed frozen brine shrimp everyday and since my other food is YUK, any suggestions?
(2) He's definitely not being harrassed - it's 3:45am now, the lights are off and I can see what's going on. He's king of the hill in my tank. Why is he so shy???
[This message has been edited by Stig (edited 03-26-2000).]

 

[stig]

I forgot to explain the white spot thing.
This happened to me before.
I had a clown that developed a couple of white spots. Being very concerned about my fishes well-being I went to ye local fish store. He suggested the 1 degree hike. It worked. With this guy, who had quite a lot of white spots, it worked too. It seems that there are mamy parasites that exist and not all of them are ich. I was told that clowns have very soft skin and are very prone to all kinds of parasites. If you see what looks like ICK, try raising the temp of your water by one degree and, since the parasites don't like heat, you may be pleasantly surprised the next morning when your fish has lost ALL his parasites. It sounds to easy to be true, but believe me it works

 

[falcon]

How about damsel. I like that name

 

[veskas]

Was talking to my LFS who just got some perculas; he wouldn't sell them to me because the poop was white; he claims that a sign that they were gassed upon capture & probably won't make it; he had 7 & was down to 3 in a couple of days; try sticking to tank raised clowns from now on;

 

[beth]

Yes, raising temp in the tank is a great natural way to deal with parasites [though, naturally, not full-proff]. My concern with this is that higher temp causes less oxygen in the water--thus you need to make sure that you have lots of water circulation going on, especially at the surface. This is especially true for tall rather than long tanks. Your ecosystem depends on lots of surface oxgyen getting into your system, which is harder to do with less surface area in tall tanks. If you can, use a UV sterializer. Since I have been using them, I have had no parasitic problems.
As to food, clowns are so easy to feed. Any frozen foods should be readily accepted by these fish, and should be offered to all your fish. "Variety is the spice of life" definately applies to nutritional needs of captive fish. I mix up about 6 different foods for my fish daily [you can mix up several batches to last over several days and put this well sealed in the freezer for storage until needed].
[This message has been edited by beth (edited 03-26-2000).]

 

[kris]

I think your name is fine--I use my real name and it's kinda boring too, but I'm not the most creative person in the world--I say keep it.

 

[stig]

Thanks for all the info. Yeah, Kris you're probably right.
I'm a bit concerned that my clown may have been gassed. Does anyone else have any input as to whether or not white "poop" suggests gas? It was certainly brown when I put him in the tank. (please don't think I spend my days studying it in great detail

)
Beth, are you completely against bought foods: flake, pellet etc?
Every 2 days or so for the brine shrimp, right? When you say frozen food, what kind of stuff do you usually use? I'm not much of a whizz in the kitchen - my fish could end up being better fed than me.