Clown loach, sick?

one of my clow loaches might be sick. It looks like he has a heavy "cloudy" slime all over him. What should I do to treat this, salt? Should I put him in another tank?

 

Don't use salt with clown loaches.

What are your water parameters? Is the slime kind of fuzzy looking?

-Chelle

 

yeah it is kinda "fuzzy", only my nitrAte levle is high, but every thing else is right on the dot.

 

I just got home and looked in my tank and the clow loach has seem to cleard up and it sure looks a lot better. But now I have a Blue darf goraumi that is sick FOR SURE... I went to feed them and it did not come up to eat it just stayed on the bottom of the tank kinda tilted on its side with its gils and mouth moving fast. I dont know what It is, should I isolate it and treat it, if so what should i treat it with and what dose it have. please help because it looks bad!

 

also the other fish were bumping into it and it was just being moved around in the rocks!

 

First of all, do a water change to get your nitrAte levels down. Also, please post the actual numbers for ammonia and nitrIte. Does the tank have an air stone? What is the temperature?

-Chelle

 

I just did about a 40% water change,
My NitrAte Levle is 3.0
I dont have a test for ammonia
I have an air stone and my temp is 79-81

 

What's your nitrIte reading?

If I recall, this is the tank with the balas, right? In which case it's overstocked so there's a good chance that the ammonia and nitrIte are too high, both of which can cause, among other things, heavy breathing and lethargic behavior. You really need to find out those test results.

-Chelle

 

just did a test strip, hers the results.

NitrAte: 30
NitrIte: 4.0
Hardness: soft
Alkalinity 140
Ph: 7.0

 

The nitrIte reading of 4 is most likely the culprit. The presence of nitrIte decreases the blood's ability to carry oxygen so the fish is suffocating. You need to do more water changes to bring that down to 0. And unless you can get a bigger tank and cycle it ASAP, you really should get rid of the balas. Your tank is overstocked and that's likely a big part of what's causing this problem.

-Chelle

 

How big is your tank?

 

30 gallon, to day when I got up the fish was dead :cry: and the clow and now the clow loach problem is back, they looked realy good for 2 days, they today two of them looks like they had a cloudy white film on them and less color then the other.

 

Well on my site, i have a list of diseases, the closest i could find was Chilodonella, this includes a white film, and gasping. The only cure is saltwater treatment, but that cant be done cause of it being a scaless fish.

 

I'm sorry about your gourami.

For the clown loaches, it sounds like a fungal infection. Does it look sort of like the film on the frog in the bottom pic?


Keep up on the water changes to improve the water quality of the main tank. And it would be a good idea to set up a hospital tank for the clown loaches an start treating with Maroxy.

-Chelle

 

Um not really, its more of a white cloudy slime thats not that thick. They have just lost a lot of their color.

 

So far, my best guess is a bacterial infection of some sort. Try treating with Maracyn.

-Chelle

 

im using Mardel right now

 

after they are "better" should i do a 100% water change?

 

Mardel is a company that makes several meds inlcuding Maracyn (and also Maracyn two, which isn't the same as Maracyn).

Are you treating the whole tank, or have you set up a hospital tank?

And, no, I wouldn't do a 100% water change. If the pH, temperature, hardness, etc of the new water is too different from the old water, changing that much could shock the fish. If you mainly want to do water changes to get rid of the meds, you can just do a series of smaller water changes (25%).

-Chelle