Faint white spots on clown best seen in blue light?

[Playapixie]

So last night I kinda freaked when the blue-only LED lights came on for dusk. One of my two small juvenile ORA Ocellaris Clowns seems to have a small number of very small, very faint white spots. They are visible under the blue lights. So of course last night I started worrying and read everything I could find about Ich. But today, under normal white & blue lighting, the spots are only visible if I look really hard for them (but they do seem to be there, on body and fins.) I would never have seen these if I didn't have lights that get blue at dusk. Is this Ich? Or something else to worry about?

 

Don't think can get pics as the clown moves too fast and my camera isn't nailing focus well enough to see anything.

 

The fish is acting perfectly normally and eating well. He is not rubbing on anything or breathing funny or acting unusual (except for the usual clownfish antics.)

 

Parameters:

 

Specific Gravity: 1.025

temp 77.7

pH 8.2

Ammonia: 0

Nitrite: 0

Nitrate <4

Ca: 420

Alkalinity: 4.5 meq/L

 

Yes, this tank is new to me (3 weeks); however, all of the rock and a fair amount of the sand came from a friend's down-sized tank, the rock/sand were never out of water (well, maybe 10 minutes when I aqua-scaped), and the total move-time was around 45 minutes. I started testing on day three, and I never had ammonia or nitrite, and have had nitrate all along.

 

Other things in the tank are fine (CUC, a few small soft coral frags also mostly from my friend's tank.)

 

The clowns have been in the tank a week & are the only fish.

 

I went out today and assembled everything for a hospital/quarantine tank, & am prepared to treat with copper or hypo-salinity and isolate both fish from my main tank for 6 weeks if needed. However, I'm not convinced its Ich, and it seems like a bad idea to take them from my main tank that has stable parameters and good water quality and move them into something that won't have established bio-filtration. I did put the sponge & a handful of bioballs for the QT in the main sump today to start building it up (think I've learned to QT in the future already!)

 

So, what's the verdict? QT and treat? Or keep watching and see what happens?

[DoctaReefer]

So last night I kinda freaked when the blue-only LED lights came on for dusk. One of my two small juvenile ORA Ocellaris Clowns seems to have a small number of very small, very faint white spots. They are visible under the blue lights. So of course last night I started worrying and read everything I could find about Ich. But today, under normal white & blue lighting, the spots are only visible if I look really hard for them (but they do seem to be there, on body and fins.) I would never have seen these if I didn't have lights that get blue at dusk. Is this Ich? Or something else to worry about?

 

Don't think can get pics as the clown moves too fast and my camera isn't nailing focus well enough to see anything.

 

The fish is acting perfectly normally and eating well. He is not rubbing on anything or breathing funny or acting unusual (except for the usual clownfish antics.)

 

Parameters:

 

Specific Gravity: 1.025

temp 77.7

pH 8.2

Ammonia: 0

Nitrite: 0

Nitrate <4

Ca: 420

Alkalinity: 4.5 meq/L

 

Yes, this tank is new to me (3 weeks); however, all of the rock and a fair amount of the sand came from a friend's down-sized tank, the rock/sand were never out of water (well, maybe 10 minutes when I aqua-scaped), and the total move-time was around 45 minutes. I started testing on day three, and I never had ammonia or nitrite, and have had nitrate all along.

 

Other things in the tank are fine (CUC, a few small soft coral frags also mostly from my friend's tank.)

 

The clowns have been in the tank a week & are the only fish.

 

I went out today and assembled everything for a hospital/quarantine tank, & am prepared to treat with copper or hypo-salinity and isolate both fish from my main tank for 6 weeks if needed. However, I'm not convinced its Ich, and it seems like a bad idea to take them from my main tank that has stable parameters and good water quality and move them into something that won't have established bio-filtration. I did put the sponge & a handful of bioballs for the QT in the main sump today to start building it up (think I've learned to QT in the future already!)

 

So, what's the verdict? QT and treat? Or keep watching and see what happens?

 

 

I would wait to see what happens, if he is happy I wouldn't stress him out unless you have to

[ciedre]

If you a really concerned you could pick up some Polyp lab Medic.

 

Its reef safe and works bloody well at 2.5 x the recommended dosage.

[Playapixie]

Tried three days of Ich-Attack, which has had no effect at all on the spots (which have multiplied). Luckily it's also had no bad effect on anything else in the tank. I guess it's reef (and Ick!) safe ;-)

 

So now both clowns are in a hospital tank with their first dose of Cupramine. It was epic catching them and I don't ever want to do that again. I had to remove everything that wasn't epoxied to the main rock work and drain 2/3 of the tank to catch them (the one with the spots was a master hider.) So far they are doing fine in quarantine.

 

Lesson learned: always quarantine new fish! Now I get to have a fish-less tank for the next 6-8 weeks because I had to learn that the hard way. Hopefully the fish will recover.

[Amaleec]

Did you ever find out if they had ich or not? 🤔