Clown Fish with Large White Mouths

D

DanMegane

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Mar 5, 2012
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West Midlands UK
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Danny
The tank is 3 months old. I added a pair of clowns, 3 weeks ago, and noticed some fighting and their lips going white. The fighting stopped after a week but now thier lips are big and white! The larger clown seems to have some red spots aswell.

All the tests are good. I have 14kg of live rock with lots of life like, feather dusters, snail, copepods, mysis, possiable a flame scallopand brittle starfish.
I also have some Red Planaria (flatworms), Vermetid (tube snail), Digitate hydroid, which could be the problem? Might remove them to be on the safe side.

Could this be an infection, fighting or being stung?

Ive included a photo of the smaller, less infected (?) clown. View attachment fish with white lips.bmp
 
My first guess would be healing up from the fighting. Maybe they are still fighting off and on and you happen not to be around? Are these both percs/ocellaris (only saw the one in the pic)? The "red spots" are a little concerning and I can't really see those spots in the pic. While I have never seen it, its it possible the spots are planaria?

Eating fine, etc?
 
Big lips

greech said:
My first guess would be healing up from the fighting. Maybe they are still fighting off and on and you happen not to be around? Are these both percs/ocellaris (only saw the one in the pic)? The "red spots" are a little concerning and I can't really see those spots in the pic. While I have never seen it, its it possible the spots are planaria?

Eating fine, etc?
Click to expand...

They are a pair of percs. One of them seems to be getting better, but the other has more redness showing around face and its bumpy, but both are feeding well and seem to be acting well. I've removed some of the planaria and thinking about removing the vermetid aswell.

Ive included a picture of the worst one..



Big lips.jpg

Big lips.jpg
 
That looks like battle scars to me. Did you buy these fish as a pair or pick 2 clowns out and put them together? They look to be decent size and both appear to be fairly equal in size. Is that accurate?
 
They have been in the lfs for about 2 months as a pair. One of them is a little bigger. There looks like part of his mouth is missing :( and one of my feather dusters left thier tube on to the sand. Was still alive but cant find him now. My Cal has dropped to 400mg/l but I dont think thats the cause.

On a lighter note, the one clowns lips looks like they was in the first week :) Just hope the other will recover
 
I'm not sure if they are actually a pair. You might have 2 females which will never get along. How big are they? Usually in a pair the female is significantly larger than the male.

04-clownfish07.jpg

I just paired up my clowns a few weeks ago and already I swear my female is getting bigger faster than the other. AT my LFS they use to just give you 2 clownfish and call them a pair even if they were not really a pair.

04-clownfish07.jpg
 
^That was my concern, once a clown becomes a female it cannot change sex again so if they were both females when you bought them, they are going to fight. However, if they were purchased at that "in between" size they may just take a little longer to sort themselves out as to which will be the dominant female.

I wouldn't worry about about your duster. They'll do that every so often.
 
I would say the one is about 10% larger. I was watching them in the store for a few week and just hope they are a pair.

Thanks for the advice and hopefully I'll have a great photo like yours in a few months
 
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