Please Help. Clown Loach May Have Skinny Disease?

[ey2006]

Hi, my friend has 5 clown loaches (had them for a month) that she recently treated for white spots. She's successfully gotten rid of the white spots and is still treating her tank to make sure the ich is gone.

She's noticed that out of the 5, while they all swim and school together most of the time, one of them tends to eat very little compared to the other 4. This same one also is skinnier than the other 4, we checked the other threads on the forum and also on the internet and her skinnier clown doesn't look anything like the skinny disease per se, but it is skinnier than the rest of the clowns, as the rest are quite fat.

Is this a cause for concern or is it normal? I think out of the 5 clowns, there is a leader and there is also the weakest one, which seems to be this "skinnier" clown.

We asked the LFS the other day and they told us it was normal and shouldn't be skinny disease.

Is it too early to say its skinny disease? Is there anything she can do to help the clown eat more food?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ey2006]

Any suggestions?

 

[ey2006]

Should the single clown loach that isnt eating as much be separated from the rest so she can be fed more food? The problem is, my friend only has one 400L tank and no quarantine tank setup, is there any other way to help the little fellow?

 

[Bloo]

See my topic below - might be of help to you. Perhaps also get in touch wtih Mikev who posted on my thread - he might be able to help you more.

 

[beechey]

what are you feeding them??

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I would go with internal parasites/worms being the cause of your loaches skinniness as well, have you checked your local fish store yet for anti internal parasite meds yet? The sooner the tank is treated the better .

http/www.loaches.com/faq_parasites.html

 

[ey2006]

Thanks for the replies. The thing is, we've both done some research on skinny disease and based on the photos of clown loaches affected by this disease, we both agree that the weak clown loach in question looks nothing like the photos on the net. Does this mean the clown doesnt have skinny disease or could it possibly be infected with some other disease?

Should she wait for another month before seeing if its skinny disease?

It only looks skinny, compared to the other 4 clown loaches, but not that skinny. Its hard to explain without a picture, so I'll try and get a pic off her next time I see her. Most of the clowns in the LFS when sold are fairly skinny anyway, it takes a few good months after bringing them home, to get them to be fat and healthy like most pics of clown loaches.

One of our other friends has had clowns for a little over a year now. When he started off with his clowns, he has a similar situation, he said it took his clowns a few weeks, especially the 'weak' one to settle in and start eating. His weak clown loach started off being skinny too, but over time, has now grown to be healthy and chubby like his other clown loaches. So perhaps, this clown is merely a slow grower, but not suffering from skinny disease?

 

[mikev]

Ey,

I wrote a detailed answer on the Bloo thread, you may want to check there.

In my seriously biased view -- after all the cases I've seen -- it is good to assume every loach to be a carrier of internal parasites. About one out of three is, based on the limited stats I've collected. Given how nasty the problems may become, treating them proactively is a good approach.

hth