sick fish

hello mackenzie. i'm pretty new to marine aquariums myself, but your symptoms sound familiar. it sounds like it could be the beginning stages of marine ich. the parasite has quite a unique life cycle, and one of the first parts is invading your fish's integument, and it really likes to invade the gills (hence the heavy breathing). i had a clown that i actually lost to ich, and mine did EXACTLY what yours is doing. he hid, breathed really heavily, and swam awkwardly. i tried some remedies that didn't work, but i stumbled upon a product that has seemed to work for me. it's called "coral vital" and it's form the marc weiss company. it's not marketed for ich, but you simply triple the recommended dose for the corals, and then it helps the ich organism go dormant. i was a little late and lost some fish, but some of them came out of it and now none of my fish have ich. if it is in fact ich in the next day to few days you will start to see small white specks on your clown. be on the look out for those as these are the tell-tale sign of ich. good luck!

ps...i forgot to mention that butterfly fish are notorious for harboring parasites, and outbreaks like this are commonly seen after adding one to your tank. it is often reccommended to set up a quarantine tank and keep them there for a while and treat them witha copper-based medication to kill any parasites before adding them to the tank with other fish. this could very well be the source of your outbreak.

yeah it does sound like ich to me as well, I lost 2 clowns due to ich, they were healthy one day and the next they would swim in one place, breath heavy, then starvation, then eventually death. I'm still new to the hobby and never QT my fish, I learned a hard lesson, and now I know better then not to QT. My tank is now Fallow (fishless) for 2 1/2 weeks because of ich, I have a few more weeks to go before I can even add fish. Hopfully when I add my new fish the ich would be long gone.

I suggest setting up a Hospital tank, and treat your clown with copper or Hyposalinity (spelling?) ASAP. If your using the copper method, be sure to have a copper test kit handy, you don't want to overdose. I personally love all types of clownfish, and to hear one sick, kindda makes me sad, yeah yeah I know its just a fish, but everyone who's in this hooby will grow to love everything in the tank. I wish you the best of luck and everything comes out good.

Hiep

Does the clown have a heavy slim coat? Does it have any white spots on it? Does the fish show any change in color? Does it show any other symptoms?The symptoms that you described could be anything from beginning stage of Cryptocaryon irritans. To Brooklynella hostillas, to gill flukes, to internal paracites of the swim bladder,and blood flagellant.
Remove the fish to a quarentine and I would start with treating with copper sulfate. Make sure you have a test kit for copper when treating. If the fish appears healthy you could try a fresh water dip. Which if it is gill flukes they cannot take the change. But this will have to be very short because you said that it already has excellerated breathing.
Keep an eye on your other fish as most of the causes of what you described are contagious in a manner of speaking.