Loaches Online Forum

Hey Guys,

As many of you may or not be aware I recently picked up 12x 5cm YoYo loaches.(Ordered 10 but it appears my LFS's supplier can't count). One of them is very, very skinny, all the other loaches look and behave perfectly fine (nice round stomachs after feeding). The skinny loach seems to never visit the bottom of the tank and just lays resting against the heater holder on the back wall of the tank.
I would like to know what I should do to try and help save my skinny loach?

* Type of fish that are affected:
YoYo Loach (Pakistani Loach)
* How long has the tank been set up for?
12+ months.
* Size of tank:
10 gallon quarintine
* How is the tank being filtered?
400 litre per hour wet dry.
* Water temperature.
85
* Your maintenance regime:
Daily 50% water changes, monthly filter clean
* Has anything new been added to the tank recently? (fish, plants, live food, decor etc).
Added 12 YoYo loaches on 11th November.
* What other fish are in the tank?
None
* 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).
Test results, used my own API liquid test kit and took a sample of water to my LFS which confirmed my results.
Ammmonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10
pH: 7.5
(WIll get kH and gH tommorow from my LFS)

Any help in saving my skinny loach would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Tom

Sadly, he died after a week or so. Same exact thing. He just never ate, and was the only one to be skinny. Also, hung out by the heater. He got extremely pale, then passed .
ALl the others were healthy and happy. I got a lot of people on LoL mentioning a thing called "Skinny". Whatever it IS, not really much you can do to help him, in my VERY inexperienced view, it's an internal thing, maybe a parasite, maybe an internal organ gone wrong; but whatever it is, it took my lil guy.
If I had another acting the same I MIGHT try to move it and somehow grind up enough food that it may work its way into him inadvertantly. But that's just a patch, not a fix, and moving one that skinny & weak, may just kill him.
I hope yours makes it, though. I'll pray that he rallies and becomes a fat piggie like most loaches are ...

Skinny disease is generally thought to be caused by internal parasites often in wild caught fish. If your fish show skins of skinny disease, treat for internal paratsites. There are articles on here on how to do that. If they are in quarantine, I would treat all of them.

http://www.loaches.com/Members/shari2/l ... chloride-1