Loaches Online Forum

Two months ago I bought 24 2" clowns to add to my group of 12 larger clowns.I put them in a 100gal tank with lots of driftwood for quarantine.I added 12 healthy Australian rainbows from another tank to make them feel more comfortable.Then every one got sick.I lost half of the rainbows and nearly half of the clowns.I have no idea what they had other then at one point ick was in the mix.Now everyone seems okay and while I am in no hurry to add them to my others. I do wonder what is a safe time period to hold clowns in quarantine before exposing them to your others?

Wow!!

You are going to have a nice big bunch of clowns to watch. Sorry about the ones that you lost.
I'm not an expert on quarantine, but I've seen some people mention two weeks and some a month or more. I tend to be too impatient to wait more than two weeks. But since you know that you had ich, perhaps it would be best to wait longer.

Enjoy your loaches, and welcome to the forum!

Oldfish wrote:Two months ago I bought 24 2" clowns to add to my group of 12 larger clowns.I put them in a 100gal tank with lots of driftwood for quarantine.I added 12 healthy Australian rainbows from another tank to make them feel more comfortable.Then every one got sick.I lost half of the rainbows and nearly half of the clowns.I have no idea what they had other then at one point ick was in the mix.Now everyone seems okay and while I am in no hurry to add them to my others. I do wonder what is a safe time period to hold clowns in quarantine before exposing them to your others?

First of all, you may have sent your system into shock adding so many fish at a time. 24 loaches, plus 12 rainbows probably destroyed any sort of biological filtration you had.

Secondly, in the long run, that is going to be a lot of fish for that tank. While it may work for now, you'd need at least a 360 gallon tank to support 36 clown loaches at full size if you are using the 1 gallon per 1 inch of fish method.

I tend to agree that you'll eventually need a substantially larger tank, although 350 gallons may be stretching it.

If Ich has been an issue, keep them in quarantine for several weeks - up to six weeks. It's very tempting to end a quarantine period and just move your new stock along, but it's not worth the risk. Keep up very regular large water changes and try to monitor ALL the new fish for any signs of ill health.

This will allow you to feed them up and make sure you have very healthy fish going into your community tank. In a batch of 24, you're liable to have picked up at least a couple with other health issues.

Also, you should post some photos. Few of us get to keep that many clowns at once.

Mark in Vancouver wrote:I tend to agree that you'll eventually need a substantially larger tank, although 350 gallons may be stretching it.

If Ich has been an issue, keep them in quarantine for several weeks - up to six weeks. It's very tempting to end a quarantine period and just move your new stock along, but it's not worth the risk. Keep up very regular large water changes and try to monitor ALL the new fish for any signs of ill health.

This will allow you to feed them up and make sure you have very healthy fish going into your community tank. In a batch of 24, you're liable to have picked up at least a couple with other health issues.

Also, you should post some photos. Few of us get to keep that many clowns at once.

My original clowns are in a 750 gallon homemade tank(96"X48"X38")so there should be plenty of room when the new ones get moved.I will keep them in quarantine for at least six weeks until their all fat and healthy.So far they are looking better every week.Also I do need to take some photos for posting.When I do I'll get somone on lol to walk me trough it.