Loaches Online Forum

Hi I am Icewall42's b/f and I live with her. THis morning on the way to work I notice the striata was dead :'( Then I looked and I noticed the two skunks were gone as well and the modests and the histranica was on the way out. They looked terrible.

As a precaution I guess we are going to move the clowns to the old 30 gallon tank and then isolate all the sick fish (Which is pretty much everyone else) to a holding bucket.....

As a back story I notice that one of the skunks was acting funny on tuesday so I added some melafix and some other anti-internal parasite stuff to the tank. It seemed to be doing better so I halved the doses.

Then last night I decided to hold off on adding the super velvet stuff. Now they are all dying....any advice? I have a picture of one of the loaches for help hopefully....
They are both still alive....

Icewall said if any of you need to call her you can do so at 215-932-1590 we are going on an emergency run to the LFS.

Well the histrionica just died THis is sucky I don't know what to do....

Just want you to know that I'm really sorry about this. It must be awful to watch and not know what to do.

I'm too inexperienced to offer any advice on this. Sorry.

Well thankfully someone from here has called Icewall so thats good and they are talking to her right now. Thank you so much for listening to me blubber on. If anyone else has any advice please do reply. And thank you for the help everyone.

stabile007 wrote:Well thankfully someone from here has called Icewall so thats good and they are talking to her right now. Thank you so much for listening to me blubber on. If anyone else has any advice please do reply. And thank you for the help everyone.

That is so nice that someone called. The people here are great!!!

They most certainly are!

That's a nice big histy too. So sorry.

I'm sorry

Oh man. Unfortunately, i don't know for sure what it is, but I do know that it's a killer. Lost several fish to it a while back. Only managed to save two out of 5.

Were the fish flashing at all prior to your noticing this? If the fish are showing rapid gill movements, raising the temp may do more harm than good unless you can keep the water very well oxygenated. Velvet attacks the gills much like ich. According to THIS page, "hyperplasia of gill epithelium leading to
respiratory and osmoregulatory problems is usually the cause of death.
Development of the disease depends on water temperature and light.
At 23-25 C and light development of the dinospores takes 50-70 hours.
At 15 -17 C or in the datk this may take 11 days or more. So, potential
treatments or at least methods to lower mortalities are lowering the
temperature and/or reducing the light."

If it is velvet, and it may be if the super velvet plus was working, leave off the lights. The organism contains chlorophyll. Since the two ingredients in the med are acriflavine and sodium chloride, it may be that it was the salt that was having a somewhat beneficial effect while the acriflavine was working on killing off the free swimming form in the water column. It propagates rapidly at temps above 20C (68F) which is part of the reason it can kill so quickly at tropical aquarium temperatures. The late stage of the disease is described as what you see in the pic of your modesta. Early stages are hard to see, often going unnoticed until in the late stages. Once you see fish in this stage it is so far advanced that it is often too late to treat.

According to what I've read this morning, you should remove all fish from the tank, and treat in another tank. Treat all the fish, but if you have fish with no late stage symptoms, maybe keep them separate from the very badly infected ones. Nevertheless, I'd treat even the healthy looking fish, too. One site said that if the free swimming form doesn't find a fish host in 24 hours it will die. Another recommended that you should disinfect the affected tank before putting the fish back into it.

Salt is helpful, in fact, a couple of the scientific papers recommend it for treatment. Recommended dose is 1tsp/5 gallons. I think I'd halve that for loaches and use 1tsp/10 gallons.
Concurrent treatment with an antibiotic is a good idea at this stage since Velvet attaches to the fish with flagellates then the pseudopodia penetrate the skin and soft tissues of the gills. The pseudopods destroy the cells and feed on the nutrients inside. Secondary bacterial infection becomes highly likely.

If you can save some of your more badly infected fish I think I may have found what it was that killed mine...time to break down that tank, I guess.

Oh no!. sorry to hear this. Some medications reccommend a partial water change between dosages. If there are too much chemicals in the water, it can be toxic to all fish and the beneficial bacteria. I hope things get better quickly.

Thank you so much for all the info, Shari, I appreciate it so much. I want to think it's velvet, though I'm not sure because my biggest clown had it some years ago, and it looks like a darker grey, even fuzz on the side of the fish. It might be possible, though, that this is a different strain of velvet?

Anyway, I've done exactly as you've said. All fish are out of the infected tank, the healthy ones in the 30 gallon with some traces of Melafix and a ful Super Sulfa treatment, and the 3 infected modestas (still alive) are in a large round bucket with a heater and airstone/bubble wall. I think their temp is up to 84-86F, but if you think I should lower it, I can do so. They also have Melafix traces and a full dose of Super Sulfa.

I went to the LFS and got Formalin, Some ich medication that has formalin and malachite green, Furon-2, more Triple Sulfa pills, and some Maracyn. I actually looked online and found that Formalin/malachite green is bad for loaches? Please let me know. I did NOT put it into any of the tanks.

But can I soak plants in it?

Also, none of the fish had rapid gill function. Also, I didn't see any of them flashing. The modestas sort of just sit and lean against the side of the bucket. The clowns are swimming around and begging shamelessly.

Also, I think the water was changed probably... 1-2 days agol.

It's possible that you could be seeing the effects of Ichthyobodo (Costia). A characteristic sign of infection with this parasite is excess mucus production and i think i see this with your loaches.

A common parasite

As with many fish parasites, small numbers of Costia (or more correctly Ichthyobodo) are not uncommon and appear not be detrimental to the fish's health. In small numbers these parasites seem to live on cellular debris in a commensalistic relationship with their fish host. Costia occasionally live on the skin and gills of healthy fish and it is believed that the fish's defences keep the parasite population under control.

It becomes a serious threat when, for various reasons, the parasite becomes established in large numbers. As with all parasite infestations, large numbers will affect fish health by causing serious tissue damage to both skin and gills, as well as secondary effects such as hyperplasia or secondary infections - particularly of the gill.

They can reproduce at a phenomenal rate - under ideal conditions

The main danger from Costia is the rate at which it can reproduce; quickly taking advantage of any shift in the balance of health. It is not unusual to see very sick fish literally alive with parasites (see the fish disease movies). However, the question that has to be asked in such cases is: "is the fish sick because of the heavy parasite infestation, or has it attracted parasites because it is sick?". At higher temperatures the generation doubling time can be as little as a few hours!

They do not reproduce sexually, they simply divide into two, a reproductive process called binary fission. The conditions that encourage this type of explosive population growth are those that we would expect; that is, stressed or sick fish, poor water quality and/or overcrowding. Under such (ideal!) conditions it reverts to a parasitic existence, attacking living cells with disastrous consequences.

Identification

Costia infestations cause a typical irritation response from the fish. Heavy and laboured 'breathing' (judged by watching operculum movements), flashing and rubbing, skin cloudiness caused by excess mucus, focal redness, lethargy. At a later advanced stage (which may be too late for treatment) fish often isolate themselves, sometimes near the water surface or water return. They can also exhibit extreme lethargy with long spells laying on the bottom with clamped fins. I should also point out that these clinical signs are not exclusive to parasite infestations and can be caused by several other factors including adverse water quality.

For an accurate diagnosis a skin scrape and a gill biopsy should be taken as it is not unusual for the skin to be 'clean' yet the gills suffering from a severe parasite infestation - or vice versa, or indeed the two areas to be heavily colonized by two different parasite species!

Under the microscope you will probably need 400x magnification to see these small parasites, as they are only 10 -20 µm long (1µm = 1/1000 millimetre). Because they are so small it sometimes helps to rack down the microscope condenser and add a little more contrast. Free-swimming Costia is identified by its characteristic flickering, caused as it turns its crescent-shaped body. It is a fast moving parasite.

When attached to the skin or gill it assumes a pyriform shape and clusters of parasites can sometimes be seen on the edge of gill epithelium in gill biopsies - as seen in the photomicrograph above. One or two parasites per slide is not cause for concern. If numbers are higher than this, treatment and a review of environmental conditions should be the order of the day.

Hmmm it's so hard saying... I haven't seen any rapid gill function or flashing The infected fish are lethargic, but they don't hang near the surface. They sit either on the ground or against the wall, upright.

Either way, it looks certain that this is an external bacteria that should be hit with antibiotics?

I would recommend a treatment with eliminating protozoal parasites on the label.