Sick Clowns - Update w/ Pics...

[Reefguide]

You might remember that this started to happen all of a sudden to both my clowns. They don't seem stressed, eat well, all seem fine. But you can see in the images below that they have these black spots everywhere except the white bands. They are irregular in shape. Some are oval shaped some round and some more like a streaks. I though fungal. What do you guys think ??

Thanks

 

[liquid]

I have absolutely no idea, so I'm going to give you a ^bump^ to get more responses. I'm sure someone out there might know. It looks like ich, but I've never seen black ich before.

Shane

 

[Reefguide]

The reason I don't think it's Ick is because I always thought Ick were smaller and more perfectly circle shaped. I may be wrong, I have never seen black ick either. I'm just guessing !!

Thanks Shane !

 

[RLiu818]

The reason I don't think it's Ick is because I always thought Ick were smaller and more perfectly circle shaped. I may be wrong, I have never seen black ick either. I'm just guessing !!

Thanks Shane !

I know exactly what those are.

They are sores from the clown resting on certain corals (usually zoos) which irritate their skin.

These black sores do not affect the clown's health except they look ugly. Check where your clown is sleeping at night, it is probably brushing up against a zoo or something. There were many threads regarding this at reefcentral.com

Unfortunately, these sores seem to be permanent. i moved one of my zoo frags away from his sleeping area and he has not gotten any new black sores, but the ones he originally got are not going away nor receding.

 

[Reefguide]

DOH !!!!!!! 8O Thanks for the post !!

That actually makes sense... I added 2 pretty big zoo colonies just as they got sick. I thought maybe the Zoos had maybe introduced a fungus or somthing... They sleep in my Alveopora and have never had a problem but they must have gone to check out the zoos the night I introduced them !! Bummer, I'd hoped that would go away !!

Again, thanks for the reply, at least now i know !!

 

[Len]

Yeah, definitely not black ich. I didn't know about the clownfish epidermis irritation caused by corals. Interesting ..... learn something new everyday

 

[Anonymous]

Weird. My Clarki's have the exact same problem. I always figured it was age spots since I've had the fish a while and they never seemed stressed about it. I do have a pretty big colony of zoo's in the tank too. I'll try to post some pics later.