dying loaches

[icewind]

I have a 75g peacock cichlid tank, that until last May also had 3 beautiful clowns. Unfortunatly after having 3 yellow labs in QT for a month, after adding them to the tank a week later came down with a horrible case of ich anyway. By the time I noticed it after being gone a few days, the poor clowns were covered in it, and still lost 2 of them. I treated with higher temps. and salt and still cant believe the one still made it as he was so bad off even his eyes were covered! But he did and now he is healthy and has grown to be about 3-4". I wanted to wait awhile before adding new ones, and the past month I have had several clowns in the QT, but I have lost 3 out of the 7 I started with. I do 2x week water change and vacume, replacing or cleaning the filters bi-weekly. No amonia, ph about 8, no nitrites and around 5 to 10 ppm for the nitrates. I am on well water, but still add a bit of API conditioner anyway with each water change. Im just frustrated that they seem to be dying in the QT before I can even get them grown out enough to put in the big tank for the only clown! The ones that have died have been the smallest out of them all, is it normal to have this much problem, can you give me some insight to what I may be doing wrong, I just would like to at least be able to add 3 to the big tank some day!!

[glenna]

sorry for such a late reply:
I have been there, and know how you feel. I actually have a loach named "Wilson" , named after the basketball from that movie with Tom Hanks where he is stranded on a desert island and gets so lonely that he names the ball Wilson....This loach was the only one who survived quarantine from a larger group, and I was so paranoid about putting him into the main than that he had to live there for 6 months!!!!
Anyway, I think one can get a group of infected loaches when bought at the same time, from the same tank at the LFS. I try not to do that anymore, but it can be hard, b.c you really do not want to have separate Q tanks.
Still, I will NEVER add fish to my main tank that could infect my really healthy loaches, so I guess this is a hobby of patience!!!