Loaches Online Forum

Hello

I posted this on another fish site and they said it looked like Skinny Disease. I just want to make sure and find out some more info on it.

I have 6 Clown Loaches but 2 of them don’t look normal. One is skinny and the other has this bulged looking belly. They both seem to be normal eat and swim fine.

They were in a 75G fish tank with a Aquaclear 110. There tankmates are 1 Sailfin Pleco, 2 Cory Cats, 1 Striped Raphael Cat, 6 Swordtails. Right now there in a 30G tank cause I'm working on the 75G.

Looking at other Loaches with Skinny Disease I think the Skinny one hast it buy not sure about the other one.

Skinny CL:
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/9094/img0408r.jpg
http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/9103/img0406pj.jpg
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/88/img0405sb.jpg

Bulged Belly:
http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/118/img0410lah.jpg
http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/9367/img0412fm.jpg
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/3754/img0413uu.jpg

The pics aren't the best hard to get a good pic and even then it from my IPhone.

Is this contiguous? I don’t want my other fish getting sick. How can I save them? Would Seachem ParaGuard help?

Please Help.

Thanks!

The loach looks emaciated which is a symptom of an internal bacterial infection, and/or internal parasites, or starvation.

What meds should I use cause I feed them everyday and he eats. If it is a infection or parasites is it contagious? will my other fish catch this? I looked on line and i found a product called ParaGuard by Seachem says it does Parasitic, Fungal, Bacterial, Viral.

When I have thin loaches I treat with levamosile. Works well. Have you tried the medicine you have? Many loaches are wild caught and have parasites. I get my Levamisole here. http://www.aquaresearchcenter.com/product_page.html His rocket filters are great. THey run on an airpump. I do lots of water changes to flush away the parasites.

I would alternate the treatments. Do the first dose of the anti-parasite meds, then during the break between doses use an anti-biotic.

The usual dose for parasites looks something like this:

Dose
Water change, several days w/o med
Dose
Water change, several days w/o med
Dose
Water change.

The timing depends on the parasite. Many of them have a life cycle that leaves them vulnerable to medicines only at certain times, so by timing the medicine right you can kill the most parasites while exposing the fish to the least medicines.

The usual dose for antibiotics calls for a minimum of 5 days of antibiotics.

If you do not know which parasites or which bacteria you are treating, I would be prepared to do this:
Treat with one anti-parasite medicine and one antibiotic as suggested above.
Then find different products that treat a different type of parasite (Not all 'worms' are killed by the same meds) and a different range of bacteria.