Clownfish Sitting at Bottom gasping for air

[JimmyNeutronium]

I really don't understand what is happening. I quarantined a pair of clowns using copper and everything was perfectly fine. Then I wake up this morning and one of the clowns is sitting at the bottom of the tank breathing rapidly. It is moving very little, but seems to have no visible symptoms. The only explanation is maybe brook, but it is showing none of the symptoms of brook. If anyone has any idea what it can be please let me know. 

 

My ammonia and nitrite are both at 0 and my salinity is at 1.025

[Clown79]

Did you fully cycle the tank before adding fish.

 

What are you using for flow in the tank?

[mcarroll]

On 9/28/2021 at 12:57 PM, JimmyNeutronium said:

I really don't understand what is happening. I quarantined a pair of clowns using copper and everything was perfectly fine. Then I wake up this morning and one of the clowns is sitting at the bottom of the tank breathing rapidly. It is moving very little, but seems to have no visible symptoms. The only explanation is maybe brook, but it is showing none of the symptoms of brook. If anyone has any idea what it can be please let me know. 

 

My ammonia and nitrite are both at 0 and my salinity is at 1.025

What symptoms was the fish showing when you put it into treatment?  

 

Have those symptoms changed?

 

To me, depending your answers, it sounds like the copper is getting to him.  

 

Copper is toxic to fish as well as to parasites....has to be dosed with care, and it's best to use a test kit to verify proper dosing levels.  It's also best to ONLY use it as-needed...not on fish that appear to be healthy.

 

SRAC 0410: Calculating Treatments for Ponds and Tanks has good info on dosing things like copper.  There's a ton of other good info on that site as well..mostly oriented toward food fish production, but most of it is more general and also applies to aquariums:  https://srac.tamu.edu

 

FYI, it's actually quite hard to do copper quarantine correctly so that no fish are hurt AND all pathogens are wiped out.  Competing priorities....one calls for stronger treatment; one calls for a weaker one.  Not really an appropriate challenge for a newbie IMO.  There's a lot that can potentially go wrong at each stage of treatment, including anything from fish handling to chemical measurement.  To give you an idea of the potential complexity (without recommending the procedure) check out this guide:  How to Quarantine.  FYI #2:  QT is so hard, and newbs have such a bad time at it, that the author of that guide has started a QT service where he'll QT the fish for you.  Not recommending that either – but it should give you the gist that QT is not something to be taken lightly.  Done wrong, it CAN kill your fish.  Because it's hard to do 100% correctly, folks kill fish with bad QT processes all the time.