Loaches Online Forum

Hello all, yes i am new here but i am not new to fishkeeping. I have been in the hobby for 4 years now. My question is about a thing i have noticed about young clown loaches. When i bought my first clown loaches 4 years ago, the all had this bubble just behind their gill. It looked liked an empty stomach. Is this a disease? When ever i bought clowns that had this, they always died a few months later. If i buy clowns that do not have this bubble, they live. If it is a disease, what can be used to treat it. I have seen plenty of plump clowns with this bubble for sale that i know would do good if i just took them home and gave them the treatment. Thanks in advance.

Hi Clownloachfan. Welcome to the forum. I'm having a hard time visualizing what you're describing. Any chance of a photograph?

When you say "just behind the gill" do you mean on the abdomen of the fish, or immediately in contact with the gill? And do the bubbles you describe have any colour? Are they beneath the skin?

sorry, i do not have a photograph. The bubble is right between the middle black stripe and the gill. It is in the orange area. It is actually inside them. It has no color and it appears to be hollow. It is usually the size of a small pea. I hope this helps in the diagnosis. I will continue to look for photos. Thanks for the fast reply

this is the best photo i could find

you can just barely see it. Another bit of information is that they get skinier until they die

This is not a description of a loach I would buy, personally. Depending on where they come from (a lot are still wild caught), they can show up with all sorts of parasites and diseases. I would imagine that any loaches like this would have to go through several months of quarantine and prophylactic treatment with medications like levamisole.

IMO, this is asking for trouble. You should talk to the fish shop about where they are getting their stock and how they ended up with so many sick loaches. At least ask their advice on what the bubble is - and if they say it's nothing, or normal, shop elsewhere.

I edited your post so the picture shows up. I'd avoid loaches from this batch.

Mark,
Aren't clowns all wild-caught? I'd love to think there are breeders out there in Singapore, Indonesia etc..., but i've read otherwise. Great to hear is it is so.
A

No, we've heard of some breeding programs in southeast Asia. What's also very likely is that wild caught fry are housed in holding ponds until they are of a worthy size. IMO, this is amounts to the same thing.

For a whole shipment of clowns to show up with this condition, something is not right.

yeah, i see it time after time in my area. It is always in the small ones too. The larger clowns almost never have it. It saddens me to see them that way and to know that most of them will die. Even reputable dealers get clowns in this way. For me, its luck if i can find them when they are not too skinny, or dont have the bubble or have ich. The nice ones also seem to be pricey. I am willing to pay the price for a nice clown loach though.

i was just reading about the levamisole hrdrochloride as a treatment for this symptom. I guess that this would be the treatment to use. It listed Wasting and Bloated abdomen with fish exhibiting otherwise normal behavior as symptoms for internal parasites.

I'd suggest waiting to hear comments from Shari and Emma on this treatment regime. They have both got greater knowledge of it than I do. Emma might also be able to comment on how this shop ended up with a batch of sickly loaches.

personally, if i was the shop, i would stop buying the loaches from the supplier which is giving me the sick ones. I think the good ones are the farmed raised ones, as they have not been exposed to all of the parasites in the wild.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Sids are almost entirely farm-raised now and parasites in Sids are reported all the time.

Is there a chance for a better picture? I think I've seen this a while back and would like to make sure.
Also, do you know any details besides the fact that they die? Die how soon? What are the other symptoms, if any? What is the course of the disease? [what I've seen was pretty atypical.]

sorry, that was the best pic i could find on photobucket. The fish usually live for 2-3 months while progressively getting skinnier and skinnier while eating normally and acting normally. Then at the end, they are so skinny that their bones are showing. It does not seem to spread to clowns that have been in the aquarium without the disease, which is good, but odd. If, i remember correctly, at the end, the area around the bubble might have some blood around it. This fish also seem to curve there body and breath slowly until they die. At this point though, they do not eat.

Thanks, this actually was sufficient.

[I owned a clown in 2005 that had a bubble like this -- as best as I can see from your photo. It was a disease, which did not infect other fish, but the other symptoms don't match yours sufficiently well to be sure.. i guess 50:50 chance]

One thing from my case: the bubble was not present initially or all the time, it developed maybe a month after I got the fish and was able to knock it out a couple of times...but then it came back. Eventually, 5-6 months later, the bubble won. That it was not present initially would be a warning against buying clowns from a group that has any "bubbly" animals.--of course, if it is the same disease.

If it is a parasite, it is not in the digestive tract. This may make the treatment difficult or impossible, even some human parasites of this type are not really treatable....