Female Clownfish frozen on sand for fifteen minutes

[brianbrennan]

Hey guys,

I had something weird happen with my female clownfish and would love to know what it is / could have been. I was doing some maintenance on my tank today. 20g nano reef tank. I noticed a small outbreak of dinos crop up over the past few days. Normally these have gone away due to the fact that I have a small UV sterilizer in the back. Since it wasn't going away, I decide the bulb must need to be replaced. I had had a dino outbreak in the past, and this UV sterilizer had killed it dead almost in a day or two. I clean my glass of some algae that had cropped up the past few days, a bit more than i would have expected from where I saw it yesterday but nothing to be too alarmed at. I also clear off some of the dinos manually where I had seen them gather, just to try and get them into the water column for the UV sterilizer to do its thing. While I'm cleaning, my pair clownfish are acting normal. I then go to replace the bulb, which takes all of five minutes max. I look back into the display tank, my female clownfish is on the sand, frozen in place, drifting updside down. I could see some light breathing but it looked as if it were totally frozen. The male actually poked at it a bit, doing its little... seizure thing that it does to show passivity. Over the course of a few minutes, it looks like my female clown slowly starts to, idk, gain control of its fins again. It starts awkwardly swimming in a circle on the sand bed, very much looking not happy. Ten minutes after that, it's able to pick itself off the sand bed. It's not swimming as normal per-se, but seems to at least be able to keep itself off the sand bed a few inches now. Right now its hunkered behind a rock that it normally doesn't hang behind, but seems to be swimming in place normally.

This only all has happened in the past twenty minutes, so haven't gotten a chance to do my whole rundown of checking params, but what I've checked so far:

Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: ~10ppm
Salinity: 1.025
Temperature: 80, I'm in the process of trying to get this down a bit, I usually have it sit at 78 but the past few days have been warm without much air conditioning, so its a bit above where I'd like, but it hasn't spiked, more of a steady increase throughout the day

I've had this same pair of clowns for about 6 months with no problems, whole tank is about 9 months old.

I wonder if something with clearing the dinos and algae caused some sort of reaction in the fish to well... act dead for a bit? Or stress with me kind of bumping into the glass of a small tank? I'm going to do a water change today to try and eliminate any other possible toxins in the water, but the other fish acted totally fine during all this, other than seemingly a little stressed about his mate.

 

[brianbrennan]

Something else to note, I used nitrile gloves to replace my UV bulb. Even with that though, my fingers I think only dipped into the water of the sump up to about half the length of my nail, while scooping out my UV filter.

 

[Noobreefer1]

I'm new to the hobby just wondering what are dinos?

 

[brianbrennan]

@Noobreefer1

Dinoflagellate, its a kind of "algae" (technically its a protist, but as far as the hobby is concerned its kinda lumped in with algae) that's problematic. It has long hairs and bubbles at the end of it, can grow rapidly and cause irritation to corals and (potentially in large batches) fish. Though eye test says that what I had as an "outbreak" would definitely not have caused either, it only was closing up coral without nematocytes.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hey guys,

I had something weird happen with my female clownfish and would love to know what it is / could have been. I was doing some maintenance on my tank today. 20g nano reef tank. I noticed a small outbreak of dinos crop up over the past few days. Normally these have gone away due to the fact that I have a small UV sterilizer in the back. Since it wasn't going away, I decide the bulb must need to be replaced. I had had a dino outbreak in the past, and this UV sterilizer had killed it dead almost in a day or two. I clean my glass of some algae that had cropped up the past few days, a bit more than i would have expected from where I saw it yesterday but nothing to be too alarmed at. I also clear off some of the dinos manually where I had seen them gather, just to try and get them into the water column for the UV sterilizer to do its thing. While I'm cleaning, my pair clownfish are acting normal. I then go to replace the bulb, which takes all of five minutes max. I look back into the display tank, my female clownfish is on the sand, frozen in place, drifting updside down. I could see some light breathing but it looked as if it were totally frozen. The male actually poked at it a bit, doing its little... seizure thing that it does to show passivity. Over the course of a few minutes, it looks like my female clown slowly starts to, idk, gain control of its fins again. It starts awkwardly swimming in a circle on the sand bed, very much looking not happy. Ten minutes after that, it's able to pick itself off the sand bed. It's not swimming as normal per-se, but seems to at least be able to keep itself off the sand bed a few inches now. Right now its hunkered behind a rock that it normally doesn't hang behind, but seems to be swimming in place normally.

This only all has happened in the past twenty minutes, so haven't gotten a chance to do my whole rundown of checking params, but what I've checked so far:

Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: ~10ppm
Salinity: 1.025
Temperature: 80, I'm in the process of trying to get this down a bit, I usually have it sit at 78 but the past few days have been warm without much air conditioning, so its a bit above where I'd like, but it hasn't spiked, more of a steady increase throughout the day

I've had this same pair of clowns for about 6 months with no problems, whole tank is about 9 months old.

I wonder if something with clearing the dinos and algae caused some sort of reaction in the fish to well... act dead for a bit? Or stress with me kind of bumping into the glass of a small tank? I'm going to do a water change today to try and eliminate any other possible toxins in the water, but the other fish acted totally fine during all this, other than seemingly a little stressed about his mate.

I can't tell you if the dinos had some sort of a toxic reaction, but it seems to me if so, both fish would be affected, at least to some degree.

I've had fish "hit the wall" during tank work and either die outright, or go into temporary shock. Is the clown stable now?

Jay

 

[brianbrennan]

It seems to be. It seems at the very least like its scared but recovering. It went from totally frozen as if it were rigid, floating upside down on the sand, to then moving its front fins a bit but having its tail frozen, to then swimming in circles on the sand bed, and then hanging out behind a rock. It seems stable to me, it's acting different than normal but not too odd. I've seen it go close to the surface and close to the bottom at will, so it doesn't seem to be anything swim bladder related. So... I'd say it seems more stable now. One thing I'll say is that it seemed curious in food but not hungry, like I tried to feed at my normal time, and it went and poked out from hiding to see the food, but then retreated kind of quickly.

I've only had the tank 9 months and didn't know it was a thing, but seeing it now... it almost seems like it was acting like one of those goats that freezes up completely when scared. So if temporary shock is something that can happen then yea that's my gut feeling too. And I kinda figured on the toxic reaction, I really don't have a dino "outbreak", its really just that since I've had one in the past I'm very aware of when they're there, and I noticed a couple strands that looked suspicious yesterday become full on "yep that's a dino strand".