Losing loaches, any help appreciated

[detwod84wg]

Hi guys, I have a 600li tank setup which is established with plants, driftwood, small gravel substrate, a medium reptile rock cave for fish to hide under/in, a large artifical ship wreck and a medium log type shelter for hiding as well. I have got a mixture of fish inside ranging from neons, a few barbs, two rainbow sharks (small), a siamese fighter, a small angel, several kuhli loaches, 2 x pair of bristlenose (who are breeding rapidly) and I had 4 clown loaches.
Believe it or not ALL fish are getting on famously with NO aggression from any type of fish. However, I keep losing my clown loaches. The Ph is 7.0, water temp is 25 degrees C, I do regular water chages, I'm running a Fluval FX5 filter, nitrates and nitrites were 0 but the water hardness is high. I have read that clowns can adapt to water hardness but I just cant seem to get them to survive. They become listless, won't eat,start losing thier colour and then just hang around near the filter and heater in a corner until they pass away. Anyone experienced something similar?? Thanks Mike

[Diana]

Hi, Mike
Unusual that the Nitrates are 0 ppm, in a cycled tank they are usually always climbing between water changes, unless this is a heavily planted tank. Old test kits can give false readings, too.

Do you quarantine your new fish? I sure do! The best success I had with Clown Loaches was based on advise from this site, a couple of years ago. Search here using the term 'wasting away'.

Set up a quarantine tank, and ask at the store what the KH, GH and pH of their water is, and match it. Treat the Loaches while they are in the quarantine tank, and make any water chemistry changes slowly, over the course of a month or so.

[detwod84wg]

Hi Diana, thanks for taking the time to reply. The tank is reasonably well planted out so the fish have somewhere to breed and also play and hide. The test kit I have is as you pointed out fairly old, so I will go out and purchase a newer more up to date model kit. To this point I havent quarantined any of my fish so that may have to be the way to go. I don't have any other tanks to use so I'll need to go and purchase one. I will also take your advise of asking the store about their tank readings and see where mine is in comparison. It's a shame I haven't been able to get this right yet, as I love the clown loaches and when they first get let loose in this big tank they go nuts exploring. I just put one of my remaining loaches in a breeding net area to examine him and noticed small white blotches around his nose area. I will try to treat this guy and the tank before buying any other new fish to replace them. Plus I'm moving house in 6 weeks and it's going to prove a challenge to move this tank and the water within to the new property without any loss of the fish..Thank you again for the advice. regards, Mike

[Emma Turner]

Hi Mike,

25 deg C is a little low for clown loaches, IMO they do best at temps over 27 deg C.

You say you carry out regular water changes, could you tell us how often and roughly how much (%) you change each time? Also, how often do you vacuum your gravel?

Emma

[detwod84wg]

Hi Emma, Thanks for replying to my post. I've now increased the water temp to 29 C and will also go and buy a better quality heater (300w) which has the capacity to heat tanks from 600-1000li that way it won't be working too hard to heat the water. I'm looking at the Eheim Jager model. I was doing water changes once a week of about 96litres at a time. However, yesterday I noticed that one of my remaining two clowns had ich so I did a 50% change, aged the water and that's when I bumped up the temp to 29 C to try and hasten the cycle. I've also treated the tank with an Ich treatment containing Malachite green and will see how things go over the coming two weeks. I'm going to treat the water every three days and do a partial water change each time also. The tank is pretty well planted out and the only areas accessible for gravel cleaning are at the very front of the tank and a little on the sides. These areas are always vaccuumed when a water change is done. I guess at the moment it's a wait and see scenario. Mike

[Diana]

If you can remove the fallen Ich organisms before they can multiply the Ich issue will get resolved faster. This is hard in a planted tank, but if you used a pretty small vinyl tube you might be able to do something like a gravel vac between most of the plants. You do not actually have to dig into the substrate, just skim the surface.

[Emma Turner]

Mike,

I should have added that if you increase the temperature, be sure to increase the amount of aeration in the tank too. (You probably already know this, but I thought I'd better mention it just in case). The last thing the loaches need when battling a problem is to be struggling with a shortage of O2.

Also, depending on what other species you have in the tank, they may not cope well with the higher temps. You say you have barbs - many of them (but not all of them) prefer slightly cooler than average temps. It is likely to be bordering on too warm for the kuhlis too.

Good luck,

Emma

[helen nightingale]

sorry i cant give you much help regarding the fish health, Emma and Diana have given you very good answers. i am wondering though, what the shop had been feeding them compared to what you are feeding them. it could be they are missing something from their diet, or a picky feeders, which wont help you. some shops only feed clown loaches and yoyos bloodworm, believing that it is essential to them, so they dont need anything else - and i think i remember rightly that Emma got some loaches from another place that were used to only eating prawns.

did you geta new heater yet? i find its best to have more than 1 heater in a big tank like yours, then it wont put so much strain on just 1, and if it ever gets stuck off or breaks, then you have a bit of backup. stuff always goes wrong when the shops are shut.

best wishes for solving your loach problem. i know it will be worth it