Loaches Online Forum

The great Poseidon is dead...

That makes dead loach #6 for me... all to ich, all within a month and a half...

One clown is left, and looks like he is pulling through the tail end of his lessor ich infection.

Here is the dilemna that i found myself in last time, One clown died of ich, the other showed no signs, so i got a new one, because clowns are schooling, well a day or so after new one is in, OLD ONE GETS ICH, proceeds to get worse, and die.

Back at the beginning of the cycle....

One note, All clowns have been from same store, yet they claim to have had them for about a month, and there are NO signs of ich in the tank there.

I wish i could be done with clowns, i really do, but there is one left and i know that he needs a partner... Do i treat the remaining water, untill all ich gone, and remain treating it 3 days after last ich, then get New clown and keep treating it? (mind you temp has been at 84-86F since the 5th or so)

Please advise on where to go from here with treatments.

-fed up with fish

I wish i could be done with clowns, i really do, but there is one left and i know that he needs a partner... Do i treat the remaining water, untill all ich gone, and remain treating it 3 days after last ich, then get New clown and keep treating it? (mind you temp has been at 84-86F since the 5th or so)

IMHO, you do continue treatment and even a couple of days longer after the last symptome dissappears; but you can drop the temp after 3 days to something like 80F.

You certainly don't get another clown until this one is ok. He DOES NOT need a partner right this moment, a month in a solitary (put yourself in his place) is unpleasant but not life-threatening.

If I were in your place, I'd consider trying to improve the water params after you done with ich.

And, of course, you should realize that the moment you get the 2nd clown you will put your current one at risk ... unless you have a small quarantine tank. The risk is lesser than now, since the 2nd time you will have *some* immunity on your side, as well as more experience, but it is not something you should disregard.

You may want to look at my ich thread for comparison: I also did not have a Q-tank, but there were no clowns in the tank I put the newcomers in---putting a new clown with the old ones is something even I would not dare to do.

hth.

Trust us, they do okay without a "friend" for a few weeks. I bought one recently but he was the last one in the tank. I went to another store to buy one but noticed just one or two spots on one clown so skipped them. About three weeks later I returned to both stores and picked up another little guy from the "ich" store but everything was fine. They are currently riding the current from the small filter I have side by side with the larger one.

When I buy something I get my nose right down to the glass and inspect each and every fish in the tank. I also check the other tanks to make sure there are no dead fish laying around in the tanks. I've always been like that going back 50 years.

I used to spend hours and hours going thru the tanks in the Aquarium Stock Company's store in lower New York City. Oh, what a place that was.