Sick Clown.. Need Help Diagnosing!

[jessislav]

Hi...

So I brought home two new clowns on Monday. The smaller orange one does not seem to be doing ok has the symptoms below. I've read a thousand websites and forums and still can't decide what the proper diagnosis is or how to treat. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

-lethargic: hasn't left one corner of the tank since we got her. She did immediately start hosting an anemone, so i dont know if that counts 100% as lethargic... but she never swims more than a few inches from the thing
in my 55 gallon tank while everyone else is doing laps

-mouth moving rapidly

-last night she had a long stringy white thing hanging from her.. it fell off

-tonight i found two of the dreaded teeny white spots on her

-she IS eating frozen shrimp and mixed frozen meaty foods that i send her way via turkey baster, but she won't stray from her corner to eat if i don't

All of her tankmates are swimming around as usual and seem happy and healthy (so far)... flame angel, purple basslet, 2 urchins, open green brain coral, about 15 hermits, 10 snails (mixed), emerald crab, red crab, and another clown and sebae anemone that came home with her on Monday

Any suggestions would be great... and if you suggest meds and can recommend the best place to buy them in queens that would be awesome too.

 

[rookie07]

once clowns host an anemone(or coral, i guess), they never wander to far from it.

Was the white thing hanging from the clown poop? Clowns "can" poop white, depending on their diet.

If it was ich(I think clowns are fairly hardy), there would be more than 2 spots.

I think the mouth movement is normal

 

[jessislav]

Hmmmm... so do you think I'm just being paranoid? I realize that each of those signs can mean absolutely nothing OR if combined and in full force can mean she has ich or another type of parasite. If it is the latter I would hate to lose her and then feel like a jerk for not realizing she had 3 or 4 major symptoms of disease that I could've treated her for.

 

[KathyC]

What is the other new clown doing?
Where did you get these fish?

Are you familiar with what ich looks like? Posting a pic here might help as it is not good to treat if there is nothing wrong with the fish, but we need more info to help you out.

As stated earlier, it is quite common for them not to stray from an anenome, so I wouldn't worry about that part.
Fish that don't swim around much sometimes have little bits of tank crud land on them..so be sure that what you may think are spots are in the exact same location on the fish (ich can't move around on the fish).

If it does turn out to be ich, you will need a QT to treat the fish, it cannot be treated in a reef tank.

 

[rookie07]

To be honest, and im sure i will be yelled at for this, I never QT fish(I think that places them under more stress), If they look healthy, I place them in the tank...and most of the time, the fish get ich, at least a little bit, but the fish seem to get rid of it by scraping against rocks/corals, or letting my fire shrimp clean them(Which by the way is cool as hell to watch)

 

[sjsoto]

like rookie07 said, white string might be poop... white spots might be ick,