Sick clown?

Inabón Yunes wrote:
Only one question...
How old is he?
Even if they are the same age, usualy one ages sooner. Maybe has a natural
illness or it may have a parasite in his gills.
There are many natural reasons for that behavior. Keep an eye on him but is
he dies, check his gills, and other organs, this will tell you is the fish
just got old!
iy

Honestly, I don't know his age. To save length in my already lengthy
first post there were some historical details left out. I'll put them he

I started researching setting up a tank and reading and asking a lot of
questions of friends around April of 2005. My 55g tank first started
cycling on Feb 11, 2006. Water is from a 5-stage RO/DI unit from
Airwaterice.com. The Typhoon III with the 75gpd filters. Oceanic brand
salt mix. There's ~40lbs live arag-alive crushed coral (the wet stuff),
started with 20lbs "cured" Fiji live rock I got from a guy that had it
in an established tank for about 5 years, and was cured by myself for
about 6 months before going in the tank, and after about a month, on
March 8, 06 added 50 pounds "uncured" Fiji and Tonga rock from
LiveAquaria.com (I cleaned off the gunk and debris and rinsed it in some
waterchange water I had before putting it in). I had a heater, a Penguin
700 Powerhead, and an Emperor 400 filter with no biowheels, but some
filter cartridges for about a week making sure any residual floating
debris was gone, then basically just moving water for oxygenation and an
air stone. After about a month of that, and testing the water daily
since cycling began, everything had been zeroed out for a couple weeks
at 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 0 nitrates, about 180-300 alkalinity. At
least, according to these test kits:
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Produc...&N=2004+113074

So after about 2 months since adding water, I got my first fish. 2
tank-bred ocellaris clowns according to the LFS. They were the slightly
brighter shade of orange that's usually associated with ocellaris
instead of the true percula clowns. About a month after that, an
aquaintance was moving and selling off all his livestock and equipment.
This included 2 black perculas and an orange ocellaris that he had had
for an unknown amount of time but were pretty much the exact same size
as mine. After about a week or two in quarantine they got added in with
my other two clowns. They were one big happy group of 5 clowns (two
black percs and 3 ocellaris, for about 2 weeks until the slightly bigger
of the two blacks and the slightly bigger of my two started diving at
each other, but never nipping. After some research I figured they
probably had started making a "female" in each group before they were
put together. It was always the larger two of each doing it. I figured
dominance. So the two blacks got put in my quarantine tank, and the
three orange stayed in my 55.

So basically since the end of April/beginning of May until now, the
three orange clowns had been one happy family. Always swimming together
in a group, sleeping in a group in the upper left back corner of the
tank on top of a power head, eating together, etc. They pretty much
never even went down to the level of the rocks or below unless a piece
of pellet food made it down that far before one of em grabbed it. So it
was just odd that two days ago the sudden change and the one (I'm pretty
sure its the one that was with the two black percs originally) was
hiding in the bottom right back corner wedged in some rocks. I tried
putting him with the black percs again but they just attacked him
immediately as well and was back to hiding. He's now in a tank by
himself and so far seems back to normal and happy and isn't doing
anything odd.

Poster "George" mentioned that they may be spawning. So far they have
stayed toward the top of the tank as usual and don't seem to be doing
anything weird in the substrate.

Brandonb