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My husband found one of our clown's mysteriously dead yesterday afternoon. He was about 4 inches big and had been with us for over a year. I have had no deaths in my clown tank, except for the time when the tank sprung a leak and I had to transfer all fish into a bucket.

While the tank was getting fixed, I was losing fish from the bucket and the choice was between keeping them in the bucket, or putting them in fresh water in the tank. I chose the tank, and lost 3 clowns, but 17 others survived.

Now after one full year, this is the first death in the tank.

The dead clown was floating upside down, and looked washed out. One of the sides on his back had turned brownish red, and there was a white film floating around his body. This film/skin was attached to the clown. This could have been because of decomposition, he may have died in the morning and hubby could have found him in the afternoon, but we dont know.

I have had a couple of attacks of velvet in my cichlid tank in the other room, and I was wondering if this clown could have died of it. Equipment is shared between the tanks, but when I had the velvet attack, I didnt do any water changes in this one. The other clowns show no signs of stress or disease, so I am at my wits end about what could have happened.

Before this clown died, hubby had been feeding them live worms for two days.

Please help!
Clowny

Well, have you checked all the normal stuff like ph,ammonia,nitrite,nitrate and temp? If so has any of those readings changed recently? Also what kind of worms are they and where did you by them from?

I dont get test kits in my city so there is no way of knowing my water parameters. I have however had no problems with the fish in this tank, or for that matter with my cichlid tank.

The worms were tubifex and I got them from a LFS I usually buy stuff from. They didnt seem suspicious and none of the other fish had any problems.

It is normal for dead fish to have this white coating on them. This is known as a water mold. Its just natures way of decomposing fish. From what i hear, you have to be careful where you get your tubifex worms from. Tubifex worms love polluted water. They are seen in waters that have been polluted. These polluted waters also have tons of unhealthy organisms which include parasites.

I havent had any other problems with the tank so far *touch wood*, so I guess it was a one off case. I still dont know why that fellow died, so I am going to prolly blame the worms.