New Clowns looking Stressed.

Just got an adult pair of Picassos on Thursday and one of them looks a bit stressed and rough.  Both clowns, when I received them, were a bit pale and stressed looking.  I acclimated them to temp and added a bit of water to their bags over twenty minutes or so before adding them on Thursday.  I don't think there is any acclimation shock.  
 
The tank is a twenty gallon with a hangon filter and heater and I put a couple of leaning ceramic tiles in for shelter.  This morning I did a 2 gallon water change.  Ten minutes ago I did a three gallon change, just to be sure there is not a water problem.  Salinity is 1.023, temp about 79, no ammonia reading and I just added a small powerhead.   
 
The first day after acclimation I gave them a bit of mysis, which they both appears to nibble, but not much.  Yesterday, the same.  Today I tried to give them a bit of TDO Otohime, which they both ignored.  I just added a bit of Rods stew, which got them both swimming, but neither ate.  I also added a bit of mysis; so there is just about any food they would want in there.  
 
The one I believe to be the female looks good.  Bright orange and white color, breathing a slight bit heavy,  but not bad.  Swimming around fine.  The Male is very pale, especially the white color, he does not look to be pealing or flaking.  He is breathing very fast and having a hard time swimming.  He just lays on the bottom of the tank and once I put the Rods in he started to swim up to the top, then fall back to the bottom (yes fall, not swim).
 
Any thoughts?  Possible disease?  I've always had such good luck I'm not familiar with the signs of various diseases.  I do have some copper, but its a few years old (the test is to).  I could try it; otherwise I'll need to hit the LFS for any other meds.

Rook

Copper is always a good fall back when you don't know know what the problem might be. It affects pretty much all of the parasite based ilnesses. If you can get some new copper I'd try that just in case. Since they aren't wild chances are it's not Brook but depending on where how they were held it could be one of several others. My first guess would be either Ich or velvet. But without a good pic it is hard to tell.

Chad Penney - MBI Council
Agis quod Adis

Well, within the last minute between getting off the pone with Tal and now, he died 
 
I looked him over pretty close and could not see any disease signs and I guess I'll chalk it up to stress.  The female looks to be fine, but I'll be keeping a close watch.  I guess I can try to pair my male perc with this female picasso, after QT is done.

Rook

A good picture will help out. How much white do they have? I know our Picasso's would make it very hard to see anything on the surface of the skin due to all the white. If it was brook, you should be able to see the other signs pretty easy, like the milky streamers, and white mucous coming off. Copper is an option, but a picture would be a lot of help on this one? Where did they come from? and how old?

Our goal with "The Clown Factory" is simple....Raise healthy, beautiful, captive clownfish and ...his is our small part to help keep the Worlds reefs as God intended them to be.....Beautiful

Although possible, I doubt this is a disease issue. IMO, most likely stress. These fish came from systems with copper but it was recommended to QT them as you would any fish.

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

My post didnt make it beofre your last one, sorry for the loss, that sucks

Our goal with "The Clown Factory" is simple....Raise healthy, beautiful, captive clownfish and ...his is our small part to help keep the Worlds reefs as God intended them to be.....Beautiful

I missed that too. I'd still get some macro pics so we can look them over, if you can.

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

Considering the source of the fish I cast my vote on shipping stress as well. On a side note I have stopped drip acclimating any fish I get that have been in the shipping bag for an extended period. I did some reading in both koi and reef forums and there was discussion that any addition of oxygen (new water or an airstone) raises the pH and makes the ammonia more toxic. Simply float for temp and release. This does require knowing the shipping salinity ahead of time. Open to any ideas or correction on that theory though.

I've been reading and practicing the method waldend has suggested with one additional trick. The reasoning follows:
 
Fish in a sealed bag of water, with or without the addition of oxygen,( and I highly recommend oxygen), will have increased concentrations of CO2 both in the water and the air above the water in the bag.  The CO2 concentration will have come to equilibrium between water and vapor.  CO2 is acidic. It lowers the pH of the water the fish is swimming in, and the tissue of the fish, since he's been in there a while.  This is actually a good thing. 
 
Fish will continue to excrete ammonia into the water as they digest their food.  At low pH, ammonia is ionized, and is relatively non-toxic.  There is this relatively non-toxic ammonia ion in the water and in the fish tissue, particularly their gills.
 
The old method of opening the bag to fresh air disperses and diminishes the CO2 concentration in the air inside the bag over the water. Now the increased concentration of CO2 in the water will naturally seek equilibrium with the CO2 concentration in the normal air. So the CO2 concentration in the water goes down.  The pH goes up. The ammonia in the water in the bag becomes more toxic. The ammonia in the fish's tissues also becomes more toxic.
 
Now we add water that is pH of 8 to a bag of water that used to be pH6 or 7, raising the pH of the bag water even faster.  If the pH of the fish's tissues is faster to come to equilibrium with pH of the water it swims in, than the speed of the ammonia in the fish's tissues dissipating into the same water, we have just made the ammonia in the tissues more toxic than it was before we opened the bag.
 
Walden's description is a good one, but I would add one more thing.  

• I would make sure that the QT pH is 7 or lower. 
• Temperature acclimate by floating, bag still sealed. Use an infrared thermometer to check temperature instantly.
• Rip the bag open, take the fish gently in your wet hand, and place it in the QT. Done, 

except that you may wish to very slowly raise the pH to normal aquarium levels of say 8 or so.  Give them at least 6 hours before you start. 

I once received a box of fish from a wonderful organization.  The fish arrived looking fantastic.  I decided to QT them in my garage, since I was building a stand there and had the space, and the outside temperature was ideal at that time of year. I followed the outline above.  The fish looked fantastic. Great!
 
An hour later, not so great.  Heavy breathing, lackadazical swimming, looking very stressed.  I checked the pH.  The tank had started out at pH7 when i put the fish in, and they looked fantastic.  Now the pH was 8 !!!! What happened? I had left the garage door open.  All that fresh air had raised the pH too fast.
 I added a just the right amount of vinegar to the tank to get the pH back to 7, put a lid on the tank, and the fish were happy campers again in no time.  It was quite dramatic.

Not saying that the stress that Rook's fish could have been avoided.  I have no idea what caused its demise.  Just following up on the suggestion of waldend about acclimation procedures, and why I think this is a good way to go.
 
I am curious if others have tried this method, and what their experience with it is. Perhaps we should start a new thread.  Sorry to be off topic.

Kathy, you should write an acclimation thread.

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

Thanks for the addition Kathy. I hadn't thought about the pH of the fish's tissue. Excellent stuff.

I also wanted to reiterate what Kathy said about the cause of the death. Some fish just don't deal with the stress well while others do. The situation just triggered the acclimating thought.

Where was that write up a few days ago Kathy and Walden  It could have been stress induced by acclimation, I really did not take terribly long to acclimate, did not drip just left the open bag in the tank and added 10-20% of the bags volume of water to the bag until full, then dump.
 
I am thinking about dumping the seahorses into the seahorse tank though, with the three others.  I always have difficulty keeping the temp and salinity stable in a 10 gallon tank.  My 35 gallon seahorse tank stays very stable and the seahorses in there all seem happy.

Rook

I've got to update my reading skills. I read this and thought you wanted references….
so I looked it up:
http://www.advancedaquari...1/aafeature2#section-2
There are more refs at the end of the article.
 
oK, now I get it that this info was too late to help.  Sorry for that. And sorry for your fish loss. Bummer.

Well live and learn. You would think as long as I've been in the hobby I could acclimate fish and save them from stress. Better luck next time.

Rook

I haven't lost during or within days of acclimation in many years. I thought it was just dumb luck but I think I know why now from the conversation above. Here is how I do it..I call it Running Acclimation.
 
When I get a new little friend in I of course float the little guy (or gal) for awhile in the tank. After the temp is equalized I open the  bag a gently dump the fish and bag water into a 5 gallon bucket. Now would I do next would look like drip acclimation I take a piece of 1/4 RO tubing and start a siphon from the QT tank and bucket and let it run wide open. I let this run until the bucket is about 1/2 full. At this point I place I move the fish into QT and pour most of the water from the bucket back into the QT. Yes that includes the bag water. Generally a no-no but it seems to work.
 
I figure that the reason this works is that the flow of water is fast enough to bring the new arrival back into the real world but slow enough to not create a PH shock. Put the bag water into the small QT tank might also have something to do with it as well. Diluting the existing water with the lower PH water from the bag. This system came about not from some grand plan but just because I'm lazy and impatient mainly.  

Chad Penney - MBI Council
Agis quod Adis

I personally am still a fan of drip acclimating.  I do add an ammonia neutralizer to the water as I acclimate tho.  I will agree that some fish do definitely handle shipping and stress better than others but IMO the acclimation of these 2 fish was to short and and by adding amounts of water at a time to a small amount of water that the fish were shipped in can cause a big swing in both ph and ammonia.
 
I am sorry that you lost your fish,  it sucks when you try to take care of an animal and it doesn't make it.