The scales of justice?

scubakevdm · 02-19-2007, 10:42 PM

Hi, and sorry for bugging you again. I'm just starting out with my first salt water aquarium. It seems to be pretty stable so far, and we got a clownfish, the wrong kind of anenome (a Hatian one), a very cool harliquin clown shrimp, a sally lightfoot crab (which we used to run the tank in) and two turbo snails. I had some kind of toxic death slug that the pet store sold me until about 2 hours ago, and unfortunately had to remove him from the tank before he nuked it. Everything else is doing okay. Anyway, since I am largely ignorant on compatability issues, I wanted to run this by you guys. I don't really feel like I can trust the pet store anymore after they sold me the slug. Also, I just noticed that the clownfish seems like its missing scales right along his lateral line on both sides. If I can figure out how to get a picture up here I'll post it.
Okay, It's not the greatest pic, but you can probably see what I'm talking about there.

gm333 · 02-19-2007, 11:48 PM

It does look unusual, you said it was on the other side as well? It might be the start of lateral line disease although I am not too sure about this I have never dealt with lateral line disease. Someone who has seen this sort of thing might be able to help more than I.

Chitown1 · 02-20-2007, 07:13 AM

Hard to tell from the pic, are there more markings on it or is that it? It it eating and breathing normally? Aslo for the harlequin, those need to be kept in pairs and the only thing they eat is star fish and the process is both interesting and morbid. They flip the star on its back, then remove the 'tendons' so it can not flip back over, they then proceed to eat it alive over the course of a few days to a couple weeks, they will even bring it food to keep it alive during the process of feeding on it. You can pick up CC stars fairly cheap and feed them every 2-3 weeks but that is the only food source they will eat.

scubakevdm · 02-20-2007, 10:31 PM

There are more markings. Actually the ones on the side of the photo above have cleared up. The ones on the other side have gotten worse though. He finally started eating yesterday, and ate a ton today. His breathing seems rapid to me... his mouth opens and closes about 184 times a minute. He was hanging around near the surface alot until today, now he's hanging around at the bottom. He acts like he's trying to shake something off of him every once in a while. Thanks for taking the time to help me too.

Tommy Gun · 02-21-2007, 06:55 PM

Hello Scubakevdm! Welcome to the forum!

Like GM, I have never dealt with lateral line disease, but I do have a picture of it which is in a book I purchased recently. It is pretty similar to your clown fish in the pictures, although the fish in the book is a blue damsel.

The first thing the book brings up is to make absolutely sure that you have no erroneous electricity that may be leaking into the water. This could be coming from anything between a pump or filter which is submerged or even a poorly grounded light system. Chances are that it is so small that you cannot feel it yourself and so the book suggests using a voltmeter to test the water. This electricity has an effect on the lateral line of a fish because this is an area of the fish's body which is used to detect electricity from prey or preditors...which I find pretty interesting really.

Otherwise, you can try supplimenting your fishes' foods with vitamins since this may also be a cause of the problem. This book doesn't point this out, but I know that for freshwater fish, the over use of carbon as a fitler media can also cause this. I know that sounds weird, but apparently some people may go over board with using carbon or are too good about changing it. You could try removing the carbon, if any, in your filter and see if that helps out.

scubakevdm · 02-23-2007, 12:08 AM

It's not looking good for the clownfish. I found a bunch of white lumps on his head today, and after refering to my aquarium book, decided to give him a freshwater bath. I think there must be a bunch of parasites on him, or rather there must have been. There's a buch of holes in his head now, and I think there's a couple of them that popped when they were halfway out. Here's the latest picture, sorry about the quality, it's pretty hard tp shoot him with just the aquarium lighting without getting motion blurring. What do you guys think I should do?