Clown trauma

[rorrism]

I'm having issues with the colours of my clown loaches.

I bought 3 from the LFS, to accompany my 5 platties, 2 albino corys and clown plec and all seemed fine. The only odd thing was that two of the clowns paired off and left the other one. There was no sign of bullying, it just appeared that 1 was very shy. the other two would roam the tank etc. but this one constantly hid under my large piece of wood. About a week after I had bought them this one finally came out of hiding, only to shock my with the fact that all of the orange from it's body has gone and it was silver. This fish was mad, swimming into the side of the tank, trying to escape through the edges and constantly swimming against the filter intake. The final blow came when the fish jumped out of the tank through a small gap. I returned him to the tank pretty soon after but the poor fella just laid on his side and died.

When I got in last night my other two clowns were acting strange, and stangest of all, the'r black had gone a very pale shade of grey. I did a ~25% water change and fed them some algae wafers, not expecting them to see the night through like the last one. To my surprise I go back down to the tank this morning, and they look absolutely normal! The water was given a 20% change 2 weeks ago, and the wool part of the filter is changed weekly. Can it be that a deviation in water quality would cause such a dramatic change in the colour of the fish?

I also noticed that one of the fish was occasionaly rubbing itself against the bottom of the tank (about once every 30 minutes) and had some reddening to its side. Is this ich as there are no signs of white spots on any of the fish (I can't tell on the corys and never see the plec for long enough to check).

I know this is a lot of questions but I'm relly worried about my clowns.

Regards,

Mark

 

[chew-able]

Firstly......I have 4 clowns and 1 hardly ever swims with the group. He's a shy little man and preffers his space.....he's healthy in every way though.

As for the obvious distress of your clowns. Firstly I thought it could be ich as you mentioned they were rubbing. But this was a very fast death from it so I'm leaning towards it being almost certainly a case of poisening. The cause of this could be any number of things.

You haven't said how big your tank is or how big the clowns are. Because they are new they could be exerting a more heavy load on the filter than normal and hasn't recycled yet. This would sound probable to me since you said a water change had such a quick effect.

The other possibility is that you have medicated the tank. Clowns are small scaled fish and thus are very sensitive to medications. If you have medicated the tank then they could have been having an adverse effect and the water change diluted it some what.

If ya tell us your tanks size, size of all inhabitants (including the clowns), whether you added any medication, etc we might be able to be more specific!


Chew

 

[rorrism]

Thanks,

The tank is 25 US gal. The sizes are:

4 platy - ~1/2" each
1 Platy - ~1"
2 albino cory - ~1" each
2 clowns - 1 1/2" - 2" each
1 clown plec - ~1 1/2"

I haven't added any medication other than the stress coat / dechlorinator stuff that the LFS supplied with the tank. It's been running for about 6 weeks now, the scale of the stocking is:

Tank started with 6x Platy
2 weeks
2 albino cory added (LFS tested water, OK), 1 platy died
2 weeks
3x clown loach added and plec added LFS tested water OK
1 week
1 clown died
1 week
2x clowns look ill.

I'm having my water tested again later and will buy a test kit myself. Do I just need to test for nitrite and Nitrate?

 

[David]

Well the only problem I can see is that you will have to upgrade tank size later. 25 gallons is really too small for 3 clown loaches. Other than that I really have no idea. All I can say is that sometimes clowns go pale and then turn dark again, I think it depends on there mood, also on pack hierarchy. IME the leader is much paler in colour than the others. However for you this does not seem to be the case. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.