Please Help My Clown Loaches....

[thutton33]

I am trying to find out what is the story with my clown loaches.

I got 2 pictures of 1 of my 3 Clowns but they all look alike.

I am referring to the body coloration, there eyes DO NOT look like this pic it is the camera flash.

It also looks as if one of my Silver dollars has mild pop-eye in one eye, I am making my water changes more frequent as of now, is there anything else I should do?

Thank You

 

[jcarlilesiu]

hard to tell from the pictures... could be a scale fungal infection. Have you medicated at all?

 

[Devilishturtles]

I've seen this before on some clown loaches. How often were you changing the water? Can you test it and let us know ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate? I would rule out poor water quality before medicating. Just my opinion.

 

[imrandome1]

I dont now much about these fish so im trying to learn as much as possible, i cant see whats wrong with the body coloration? It looks fine to me, well as far as i now> Could someone point out whats wrong with the coloration, please?

Thanks, Oh and good luck with the clown's thutton33, hope it gets better!

 

[jcarlilesiu]

The "cloudy" white coloration on the surface of the clown is not normal. They have a orange/black body with red fins and very crisp and bright colors when healthy.

Water quality may not indicate a infection. I.E. you won't see any negative tests but the fish has a fungal infection.

Being that clown loaches are scaleless, they are very suseptible to skin irratation/fungal infections/ich. I always known when i have ich, because my clown shows symptoms first.

I would isolate the fish in a QT tank if you can, and treat with melafix. Don't treat with Salt.

The only other possibility i see here is a slight ich infestation that you arn't seeing the effects from yet. Basically, not seeing the white spots appearing. The cloudy white "scratches" could be from the fish constantly itching. I said i thought it was a fungal infection because i have never seen a loach scratch so much to turn white.

This is a picture of my clown loach with ich previously.

 

[imrandome1]

Ohhhhhh i see now, i thought the cloudy part was a reflection, i get it now thanks for the info jcarlilesiu it all helps, take care

 

[thutton33]

All three are scratching(Flashing) have been for a while I had started an Heat treatment and it went for 3 weeks without stopping the flashing, and I was told that it may be itch(settled food,waste etc) So I have increase the amount of water changes.


I went and picked up a bottle of melafix, the directions say to treat for 7 Days followed by a 25% water change... Is that 25% after each treatment.. so every day... or at the End??

and is there anything I should be looking for with my other fish, sideeffects etc???

Stuff smells good though eh? lol

I tested my Tank, the test pack I got was a little confusing but here are the results I got.

Nitrate Was High (Water Change was a little Late) 40 (Did Large water change to resolve)
Nitrite 0 (Established Tank)
Hardness 75 (Soft)
Alkalinity 0-40 (LOW)
PH 6.8

I am a little confused as I though High PH was Alkaline My PH is Low (in the Ideal Section) but the Chart says that my Total Alkalinity should be 120-180 did I mess up or am wrong? Could somebody tell me the Ideal Results for these tests?

Thanks

Those are the colors that match the Chart

 

[jcarlilesiu]

If its ich, which it sounds like it is with the flashing you need to raise your tank temp to at least 87 degrees. Buy another heater if you have to, and leave it there for 4 weeks, or until a week after all the symptoms are gone.

Melafix isn't going to work for ich.

Because high temps lower the amount of saturated O2 in the water, you will need to lower the water to get some splash from your filter return or get an airstone to supply extra water movement and bubbles.

HTH

 

[Guest]

This is what I did

I had the same problem with my large clown. It was very pale looking and it's bright crisp coloring was gone, but the other two loaches were fine. It looked just like yours in the pic. Heres what I did and it worked.

I isolated her in a 5 gal q-tank with 4 gal of water which was placed on a heating pad set to medium. The q-tank had pepples for substrate, an airstone and an additional heater and i raised the temp to 85/90. I started with one drop of melafix and one drop of pimafix, then over the course of the day, i added one drop of each until I had 10 drops total, 5 of each, 5/5 m/p(melafix,pimafix).

On day two, i changed one gal of water and bumped up the doses to 4 drops each of m/p, every 4 hours, 4 times. So it was 4/4 m/p, 4 times, for a total of 32 drops total over day two.

On day three she was back to her old self and I returned her to her main tank and she is fine, happily swimming about and digging in the sand.