Loaches Online Forum

We screwed up with timing on getting a new heater for the tank - our last one broke and we haven't been able to afford a new one until this week. So the tank has been at room temperature (68 degrees) for about a month and a half now. It was stupid, but we had no choice.

On Sunday, I went to crawl into bed (tank is in the bedroom) and the Opaline Gourami that we've had for two years could barely swim and he died about five minutes after I found him in distress. I immediately cleaned the tank from top to bottom since six hours earlier the fish had been acting fine and I was worried about a possible ammonia spike or a toxin. (We don't have testing kits here.) I did an 80% water change and sand vac, along with rinsing the filter media and cleaning off the plastic plants.

Two kuhli loaches (the lone striped and one of the blacks) where having trouble swimming and breathing and kept drifting onto their sides. The three clown plecos had (and still have) dropsy. The other 10 kuhlis all seemed fine.

Knowing that there's a good chance the deaths were from the low water temps causing a drop in their immune system, I wasn't sure what to do. I dug out a spare junior heater (7W) and am using that until the 75W heater we ordered arrives on Monday. Between that and using a space heater in the bedroom the tank is now at 74 degrees, and has been since 6am Monday morning. I had the water tested on Monday and it was fine (results below).

On Monday I lost the striped kuhli. Tuesday was the black kuhli. On Wednesday I lost another black kuhli. The clown loaches still have dropsy, but their color looks better today and they aren't as pineconed as they were on Sunday.

Now the kuhlis are acting very odd - careening around the tank looking like their having seizures (extreme flicking of their bodies), rubbing themselves around the plastic plants and the driftwood, and even curling themselves into corkscrews as if to itch their own bodies. This just started yesterday.

I see no signs of ich or velvet on any of the 9 remaining black kuhlis or the three clown plecos. (I also saw no signs of visible illness on the dead gourami or kuhlis - I checked before I buried them.) I'm nervous about using medications without knowing what would do the most good, if it would do any good. I DO NOT want to loose these fish, even if I was being stupid about the heater. (I've had a lot of sleepless nights this week, believe me.)

The heater will be here on Monday at the latest (Stealth Pro) and the tank will be set to 80 degrees like it has been these past six years.

What can I do???



* Type of fish that are affected (common name and latin name if possible - common names vary worldwide, latin names don't!).

Pangio oblonga (black kuhli)
Panaque maccus (clown pleco)

Trichogaster trichopterus (Opaline gourami)
Pangio kuhli (striped kuhli)

* How long has the tank been set up for?

6 years, broken down and moved houses 3 years ago with no loss of cycle

* Size of tank (dimensions and volume).

20 gallon tall

* How is the tank being filtered?

HOB, rated at up to 50 gallons. 3 foam inserts only. Inserts only changed when using them to start other tanks. (Take one seeded insert at a time.)

* Water temperature.

74 degrees

* Your maintenance regime (e.g. how often water changes are carried out, what percentage of the water is changed each time, how often you clean your filter/s and how do you do this?)

Not great about this. 50% water changes and sand vac every two weeks. Clean out filter in old tank water at this time.

* Has anything new been added to the tank recently? (fish, plants, live food, decor etc).

Nothing new - fish or decor - since February.

* What other fish are in the tank?

Just the black kuhlis and clown plecos left.

* As detailed a description as possible of the symptoms the fish are exhibiting (remember a photograph can speak a thousand words).

Kuhlis - heavy breathing, flashing, inability to hold itself upright, frantic swimming (not the normal kuhli frantic swim)

Plecos - dropsy (swelling and pineconing), loss of color

* How long ago the affected fish were added to the tank, and how long the fish have been displaying symptoms.

Plecos - August 2008
Black Kuhlis - between June 2004 and February 2010 (a few every year)

Opaline gourami - August 2008
Striped Kuhli - July 2009

Only noticed problems when first fish died on Sunday night.

* Your current water parameters - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH (please don't say 'my water is fine, the levels are ok', we would like actual numbers from the test results)

Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 10ppm
pH 8.2

Do you have a space heater you could run to increase the temp in the room? If you got the temp to go up, you could put a blanket on the tank to keep the heat in. Make sure you keep your lights on, that helps keep the temp up.

I hope you didn't clean too much. You may have messed up the cycling in your tank.

Take your water to a LFS, and have them test the water. Most will do it for free. Make sure they give you the actual numbers. Most will tell you everything's fine. Ask for real numbers. Ammonia should be 0, Nitrite 0 Nitrate less than 10 (20 at most).

In the future, I would join a local fish club, and when something like this happens, you might have a friend who can take the fish until your new heater is installed.

I ran another water sample to the lfs this morning, and it's still okay:

Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 15ppm

I'll do another sand vac and small water change tomorrow as long as I don't have any more fish in distress. I'm actually not worried about this tank loosing it's cycle - it's moved houses and also went for a period of six and a half days without power with no loss of cycle (or fish). It's pretty darn stable for whatever reason.

Right now there's another kuhli on the verge of dying. It keeps trying to filter feed from the sand and I actually thought it was dead a minute ago because it buried it's entire head in the sand and wasn't moving. I went to pull it out and it was surprisingly still alive, just too weak to lift it's own head once it pushed the sand through it's gills. It's trying it again though now.

I upped the space heater to 74 degrees, so that'll give a few more degrees of heat in the tank. I'll try the blanket idea next - I have an emergency silver blanket that I've used for my hermit crabs tanks when they got too cold - thanks for mentioning it because I never would have thought to use it on the fish!

I wish I could help you more. I know others with have more suggestions.

I got some photos of the one black kuhli corkscrewing. It's holding steady in the spiral for a few moments afterwards so I was able to get a clear picture.

They're on fine-grained white sand, so I can't tell if it's sand grains or ick on them. And I notice a gold sheen in the photos like it could be velvet but I can't tell if it's a result of having to brighten the photo or if it could be their coloration.

I'm not sure when the heaters are getting here.... The tracking says tomorrow but it looks like Fedex dumped the packaged at our post office instead of delivering it themselves.......Yeah, so that'll be delivered quick, sure.

Wow that picture is amazing....poor kuhlis . I hope they get better very soon!!! Good luck!

One way to check for Velvet is in the dark, aim a flashlight at the fish. The golden color shows up more distinctly.

Raise the temperature slowly when the new heater arrives. No faster than 2*F per day.

In case anyone has this problem in the future and stumbles across this thread:

After my last post, I was down to 6 live kuhli loaches out of an original 13. All but two were severely deformed with kinked spines or being stuck in corkscrew shape. They could still eat, but they could not straighten themselves out.

I initially tried treating the whole tank with Jungle Clear. The loaches handled the first dose fine on Nov. 2nd and stopped flashing overnight. However, when I followed the directions and performed a 25% water change and redosed the tank on the 4th they started going into toxic shock. I immediately added carbon to the filter to remove the medicine and the loaches calmed down.

The next day I tried using tetracycline and Prazipro, but the same toxic shock (breathing heavy, extreme lethargy, turning white) occurred and I added new carbon and stopped treatment immediately.

The day after that I tried straight Prazipro and by morning they were again in toxic shock. One more new carbon insert later and I gave up with using medication to treat whatever it was.

After having the chance to speak to a veterinarian who used to work with marine fish, I decided that I would treat only with small daily water changes.

It worked!!!!!

All six kuhlis have straighted out and are behaving normally again.

The only regret I have is that I still don't know WHAT caused the problems in the first place. The vet I talked to offered to sent any new dead fish out for testing, but I didn't loose anymore after that so I still don't have an answer.

We're starting to talk about restocking the tank now that whatever has happened seems to have passed. The first thing in will be a few more kuhlis to get the clan back up to comfortable numbers - I think the survivors are a bit confused not having their normal school. I will be waiting at least a few weeks longer before doing so, but I believe that this ordeal is finally over.

Very thoughtful of you to follow up.

Yes, the original treatment for all fish diseases, parasites and toxin problems, and the one still in use in most places in the world is water changes.
Mother Nature does this all the time.
When humans first started keeping fish they dug trenches or added plumbing to the nearest river and used a flow-through system.

It still is the best thing you can do to help the sick fish, whether in combination with medication, or as the sole treatment. Read the label for the best timing, but I would at least start treatment of any sort with as big a water change as I could.

Water changes:
Reduce the solid waste (assuming you are vacuuming the floor of the tank with every water change)
Reduce the fine particles that may be drifting in the water.
Reduce the overall bacterial count. The beneficial organisms cling very well to surfaces in the filter and tank, so are not reduced in population. It is the disease causing organisms that may be looking for a new host that you are reducing.
Reduce toxins such as ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and others. Including toxins you may not know about such as household cleaning products, cosmetics and other things that are getting into the tank in small amounts.
Add oxygen to the water- the actual process encourages gas exchange.
Gives you the chance to make the water the optimum GH, KH, pH, TDS for the fish. Done slowly, perhaps over several weeks, such a change usually benefits the fish.

Related benefits: Some medicines combine with almost any organic matter in the tank, not just the disease causing organism. By thoroughly vacuuming the tank you are removing a lot of the stuff the medicine might have combined with. Melafix and Pimafix are an example of meds that work best in a tank with the lowest possible organics.

Stirring and vacuuming the gravel reduces the population of anaerobic bacteria, which can produce toxins.


Interesting comments about using a different dose in an aquarium with a UGF! I had not seen that one, before.

Here are a few other less-known label details:
Do not use dye based meds (Malachite Green) if you are using Amquel or Amquel Plus. (this is on the Amquel labels)

Turn off the UV for most meds. The high energy light can destroy the medicine. This is especially true if the label suggests turning off the light, but I would turn off UV unless the label specifically said it was OK to leave it on. Look on line at the site of the company that makes that medicine. Often they have articles or FAQ section to help you to get more info about their medicine.

Some meds are light sensitive, so you should turn off the aquarium light. Ambient room lighting is usually OK, though. Maracyn is one such medicine.

Velvet can photosynthesize, so darken the tank as much as you can.

Thanks so much for posting your solution, and the good news that your last 6 made it. Smart advice from your vet.