One Of 18 Fish Gasping, Perfect Water Conditions?

[ester]

 

 There are plants in there, I'm not sure what you would define heavily planted as though haha.

 
If you look at my signature photo, thats my tank with plants, I would say thats a moderately planted tank, so if your tank has the same or more plants then that would help towards the nitrate readings of zero.
 
And yes, please do add a photo of your clown loach with any irregularities on its scales or fins etc.
 
Also a pic of your tank set up may help us too if there is anything obvious in your tank that may explain this.
 

 
 

As others have said, Nitrates should never be at zero with a cycled tank. Nitrates are the third and last step in cycling, and the only way to effectively remove them is through water changes. And even then, you're only removing whatever percentage of water you're replacing. So if you have 40ppm Nitrates and do a 50% water change, you should theoretically end up with 20ppm Nitrates after the water change (50% of 40). If you're at 20, and do a 50% water change, you'll end up with 10ppm. And so on. But you can't really ever end up with 0 unless you're changing the water too much for the test to register, or 100% of the water at a time.

And that's not good.

Nitrates can be bad at high levels, but they aren't nearly as toxic to fish as Nitrites or Ammonia. That's why it can wait a week or two to build up before we do water changes to reduce it. The fact that yours is at zero all this time is VERY worrisome. There's no way your plants would remove that much. And that brings into question whether or not your other tests are showing correctly as well (such as the deadly Nitrite).

And yes your ich meds may be hurting the clown loaches. And so does the actual ich itself. But the problem with half-doses is that the ich parasite isn't being treated with something strong enough/long enough to kill it completely off. Vacuuming the gravel removes debris and whatever else is in that debris, but all it takes is one surviving germ for the illness to resurface. Just. One. So if the half dose is killing ALMOST everything, it's not doing enough. It absolutely must kill it all or it's a useless treatment. And there is nothing besides medication and a full tear-down and sterilization that will completely kill off ich.

So your task (aside from the pics) is to find out WHY your nitrates are reading zero, and to just suck it up and treat for ich at the full dose, full recommended time. You may be able to find a treatment online that is safer for scaleless fish and/or invertebrates (I'm sure if it's safe for invertebrates, loaches will be fine). If not, ask yourself if you'd rather lose the loaches now from medication, or ALL of your fish, one by one, from recurring ich.

 
 

Could you please tell us what type of water tester you are using? Is it strips or API test kit? Strips are notorious for getting it wrong or even being out of date, which can effect the test outcomes.
Also when are you testing the water? Just prior to doing at water change, which is theoretically when any nitrites or nitrates are going to be at their strongest. Or after a water change when everything is going to be low especially after a 50% water change.
It is possible after only 3 doses of treatment that the ich parasite was still being harboured by one of the fish somewhere or somehow avoided the treatment in its free swimming stage. I recently had an outbreak of ich (after years of no issues), because of the shrimp and loaches in the tank I used a product similar in chemical make up to one I had safely used previously with shrimp and loaches. Because the medication was at half dose I and it was listed in the instructions to re-dose in 3 days if illness is still present I ended up dosing the tank 4 times consecutively to beat the ich. The fish and shrimp are all fine again now with no re-occurance of the ich. 
I am wondering if perhaps the medicines instructions mentioned anything about raising or lowering the tank temp during the treatment process? I am thinking there is a possibility that the combination of increased water temp (which will cause stress in itself allowing illness to take hold) and then the medication have some how caused gill damage to the loach.

 
I did a little research on my test kit, and found out that you have to shake the hell out of the test solution bottles.  After doing so, I found a nitrate level of 40.  This was 2 week old water.  I did a water change that day, and added some more plants from my small tank.
 
Besides water changes and having more plants in the tank, what can be done to reduce nitrate levels?
 
Thanks

 

[Ch4rlie]

I did a little research on my test kit, and found out that you have to shake the hell out of the test solution bottles.  After doing so, I found a nitrate level of 40.  This was 2 week old water.  I did a water change that day, and added some more plants from my small tank.
 
Besides water changes and having more plants in the tank, what can be done to reduce nitrate levels?
 
Thanks

 
Yep, the Nitrate does need to be shaken extremely well to get a decent reading. Human error is one of the reasons why test readings can be confusing.
 
But its really good to know you have found this and rectifying this, chalk it up to experience
 
40 ppm nitrate is not all that high though of course a lower level is desirable to help your tank stocking.
 
Water changes is the main way to reduce nitrate levels if you do not have many plants, though of course this is dependant on your tap water nitrate readings.
 
Just to give you a reference, my tap water usually gives out 30 - 40 ppm of nitrate so i will not get readings lower than this on any water changes if I only had a few plants. However, plants can absorb nirtates so this is a big bonus in helping reduce nitrate levels. I now rarely get anything over 5 ppm nitrate levels due to the plants that there is in my tank.

 

[Katanafish]

Update: Fish died

 

I'm sorry for your loss, I've just been following this thread and really hoping (for you) that the fish would survive. I know what it's like to have a several fish in the tank and the disappointment at losing some but there is always one that matters more than the others and the loss can be something you never forget.