Clown Loaches

[jacob]

my two clown loaches...one at about 3 1/2 " and the other at about 2 1/2" are acting really strange. Its like they are trying to rub their sides on the gravel on the bottom of the tank. I've had these loaches for nearly 4 months now, and they are just now doing this. They are in my 75 gallon as for tank size. As for water...the ph is 7.2, nitrate 5-10 ppm, nitrite 0 ppm, and ammonia 0-.25 ppm.

 

[The-Wolf]

flicking/rubbing is often an early sign of flukes or other skin irritant
what are your water params?
are there ant other symoptms, like rapid gill movement etc?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

my two clown loaches...one at about 3 1/2 " and the other at about 2 1/2" are acting really strange. Its like they are trying to rub their sides on the gravel on the bottom of the tank. I've had these loaches for nearly 4 months now, and they are just now doing this. They are in my 75 gallon as for tank size. As for water...the ph is 7.2, nitrate 5-10 ppm, nitrite 0 ppm, and ammonia 0-.25 ppm.

You have ammonia present in your water, what is the total fish stocking of your tank? What is your average tank cleaning maintanence regime on average and how often do you do it- have you bought any new fish recently?

 

[cane76]

mine are doing exactly the same thing clown loaches seem to get external parasites so easily do they have any tiny white spots or grey patches?

 

[kat and james]

ours do this occasionally.. and it has been going on since we bought them (about 9/10 months ago) we have never had any problems with them apart form a bought of white spot when we first had them, but nothing since. i have read quite a lot about this, and aparently i can be a sign of skin infection or irritants, but they can also be doing it when they have an ich (or the fishy equivalent of an ich)!

just keep a close eye on them and check for any changes in their skin or thier behaviour!!

kat

 

[mikev]

Could be an internal (under skin) infection too; a few months ago one of mine developed an under-skin bump on a side and rubbed the affected side against gravel. Rubbing resulted in secondary infections --- something you should watch for regardless of the original cause.

Also, just in case: if you are putting salt into the tank, decrease the amount to trace (Clowns cannot tolerate the recommended amount of salt or anything close to it, I use 10% of the recommendation.)

 

[kat and james]

i don' t think that it is advised to put ANY salt in your tank if you have scaleless fish in there!!

kat

 

[mikev]

i don' t think that it is advised to put ANY salt in your tank if you have scaleless fish in there!!

kat

It is a question of amount. Some salt naturally occurs in any water. Salt is not a poison, like ammonia, it is the high concentration that irritates, and it has some advantages too: keeps ich from emerging and helps the gill function.

(Anyway, I've been doing this for a year without any bad effects.)

Incidentally, at least one medication that is not recommended for scaleless fish (Ich Guard) works wonderfully when used at 1/3 dosage.

 

[Lateral Line]

>>> Some salt naturally occurs in any water.

This is not true. Salt is a pollutant to most freshwater fish, and particulaly seriously so for scaleless fish where it readily crosses the fishes skin membranes upsetting the osmotic balance and overworking the kidney, which burns out killing the fish. Freshwater fish living in tanks with salt always have a residual level of stress, and rarely live anything like as long as their counterparts in un-polluted tanks.

Flicking is usually a sign of irritation. All fish do it from time to time. If they are suddenly doing it a lot, then you should be looking for the cause. Any ammonia is enough to start this. 90% of people who start to treat their fish for parasites and disease are wasting their time, poor water is by far the most common cause for flicking.

 

[kat and james]

[/quote]
(Anyway, I've been doing this for a year without any bad effects.)

Incidentally, at least one medication that is not recommended for scaleless fish (Ich Guard) works wonderfully when used at 1/3 dosage.
[/quote]

advising someone to go against the grain just because it works for you is not good advice! there is a reason people say no salt in tanks which house scaleless fish!!

 

[mikev]

advising someone to go against the grain just because it works for you is not good advice!

Hey, my advice was to decrease the amount *if he has salt already*, not to add salt when he already has a skin irritation -- this would have been insane!

This idea was not mine, it came from a lfs which kind of specializes in clowns (always has healthy big ones). It does seem to work here, but of course due to the possible long term danger mentioned by Lateral I'll recheck this further. I went with this approach because salt is supposed to be good for other fish in the tank, so small amount seemed like a good compromise (and I cut 20% suggested by lfs to 10% to be on the safe side).

Lateral Line, if I may ask: long term damage: is this something you actually observed (or know of someone who observed) or just general sense? (I don't want to change the routine that appears to work).

 

[IMCL85]

Give ur loach a very close look, I have experiance of this kind of problem and it turn out to be velvet. They aren't like white spot which very close to ur eyes. velvet is gold dusting like and very small so if you dont pay very very close attention to look at ur fish u visually will never notice that problem.

 

[jacob]

yeah i definitely don't have any salt in the water. I'm not sure at all why there was any ammonia in the water, I checked my water just about a week to a week and a half ago and there wasnt any. Anyway, it turned out the clown loaches got ich. oddly enough before white spots even showed up my denison barb at 4" died. I turned the water up to what I think will come out to be about 82 degrees and added some rid ich, hopefully not too much. I added it before I saw what you all had written to not put in the full dose

 

[kat and james]

we had ich a while back, it lasted for 3 weeks we only lost two fish during the episode, one of which was a baby clown loach, it was only about 1inch across. but our other loaches were fine! they all had the ich, but they all survived, and are now happier and healthier than ever!

we upped our temp to 86 degrees, followed the dosage (there was no message on the bottle saying reduce dosage for scaleless fish), because of the amount of bogwood in the tank our pH had lowered quite a lot, so we added coral gravel to the tank, to help maintain the pH to allow the meds to work. my advice is persevere!!

i hope your loaches are as lucky as ours were!

good luck

kat

 

[LoachLover]

Fish will start doing that when they have ich. You probably can't see it yet, but it's there. The real trick is to get rid of it.