Need clownfish help

[whitetiger61]

Sparky my clown fish is staying on top of the water and listing on his side (although he quit that this afternoon ) as is able to stay upright now. He isnt eating and shows no sign of parasites on his external body. He was fine in the other tank but unfortunatly i had to take that tank down.
Here are my water parameters
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 5 ppm
PH 8.3
calcium 410
KH 11

Can substrate going aroebic cause sick fish

Thanks in advance

Rick

[Tom@HaslettMI]

Aerobic substrate shouldn't cause this. Anerobic substrate could. If you have a very deep substrate or a lot of organic matter (OM) in the substrate the anerobic bacteria may switch using Sulfate to break down the OM. The byproduct is hydrogen sulfide which is toxic to fish. If you have disturbed the anerobic areas of your sand bed you may have inadvertently released the buried SO4. I'm not sure if this is the case that there is much you can do but maintain (or increase) surface agitation to encourage the gas to disipate.

Another thought... What and how often have you been feeding your clown? Way back (90's) when the reef philosophy was that you didn't/shouldn't feed your fish often, this happened to me with several clownfish. Probably not the cause but the symptoms sound exactly the same so I thought I'd put it out there.

HTH,
Tom