Depressed Clown Loach

[Melefi35]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to this network, I'd really appreciate some advise!!!

A quick insight into what has been happening in my tank recently.

I inherited a well established 120 liter tropical tank. I transfered my fish from my 90 liter tank and all seemed well, until I went away for the week and had a neighbor look after the tank, when I came back the plants, rocks were covered in white algae looking stuff, which I believe to be from over feeding!?! Over the past three weeks I have given the tank regular cleaning, ie sifting out and disposing of the waste food bacteria.

However in this space of time I have lost several fish and unfortunately one of my 9 year old Clown Loach. I have done regular 1x weekly water changes and water checks and everything is normal, so I'm putting the deaths down to old age?!? But I have this gut feeling that something is wrong in the tank. As advise I've been treating the tank with general tonic and 5 ml of API stress zyme+ every other day.

Which brings me to the female loach, she is frantically circling the tank and now she's hovering in the top right hand corner of the tank?!?Hovering and then turning herself upside down (Which i've seen them do at feeding time) really bizzar behavior, Is she sick to or mourning the death of her mate? I'm really worried.

Please advise if i'm making a mistake or is there something wrong or hopefully this is normal behavior and she'll settle down?!?

I plan to take a water sample to the Aquarium shop tomorrow, just to be safe. And if again the water sample come back ok, i do plan to get her another mate for company.

I'd really appreciate any input.

Melefi

 

[mikev]

Several deaths, abnormal behavior, strange growth in the tank? -- writing this off to old age is wishful thinking. You got some infection in the tank.

Notice that there is no such thing as "white algae", what you are seeing is more likely fungus. I've seen such fungal growths and they do seem to cause fish fatality (albeit in all cases I know only small fish was lost); the way to deal with them is antifungals. Furan2 (while antibiotic) has some antifungal action and was effective in the cases I know of.

Massive cleanup and massive water changes will help too. You have not said just how much water you are changing, but something like 50% twice a week is what you need to do until the problem is solved.

As a general advice: whenever strange things happen, cleanup helps, and accelerated water changes do too.. And if you leave for a week it is much better just to let the tank run unattended then have a stranger mess it up.

Good luck.