Recommendations/discussion regarding my loach
Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 3:39 am
I'm new to fish forums so I'll just try and give as many details as I can.... Sorry for the wall of text.
Tank-
Tall 4ft tank - 270ish litres (perhaps 250 once you take out gravel/rocks/plants). Its a ~78 gallon tank at 100% water full.
Filter -
Jebo 835 (1100Litres per hour though a lot lower than that with age of a few years) PLUS internal Fluval3plus (I dont like it, used to have a small Rena filstar that was smaller and sucked out more 'gunk')
Heater -
boring heater. hasn't turned on all summer! Plenty big enough for tank.
Stock -
1 8inch clown loach, 3 gourami (normal sized), one pretty fish I have no idea what its called and 3 tiny grey fish. Oh and a catfish you never see (but hes there! decent sized bristle nose). I'm under the 1 inch per gallon rule by a lot i think.
Plants/substrate
Just normal gravel you buy from fish stores everywhere(rounded, not sharp). Low light/weed like plants like the tank. No green algae blooms, just that nasty bearded black algae which I keep controlled with elbow grease.
Firstly ive had my Clown Loach 'Big Fish' for 8 years+, currently around 8 inches long. He was almost invincible, outliving every fish we got with our initial fish tank. Unfortunately his initial loachy friends all died off and hes too big to get new friends for, outcompeting them for food or generally outliving them when the water quality drops (or i just cant get the knack of getting those small fish shop loaches to live). I know a single clown loach is bad but he does seem quite OK after living years of the hermit lifestyle, good clolour, going nutty/clicky when food is dropped into the tank (trying to eat my fingers, gross).
I usually feed with community fish meaty bricks (1 cube a day) + frozen bloodworms and add some other flakes/crumbs for the 3 gouramis. Before he got Hole In The Head i had been feeding with chiclid based meaty bricks due to the shop running out of the usual stuff, other than that I cant think of a change that could have caused the disease.
Yep hes got Hole In the Head I've tried the following:
- Treating for hexamita with Flagyl soaked food (restricted drug in Australia, very difficult to get from vet, vet will not give much and I live in a small town so theres no fish vets)
- Garlic/broccoli (didnt eat it)
- Multivitamin add to his meatybricks. Now back to his normal diet of 'community' bricks plus bloodworms
- prazi treatment for whole tank just to be sure
-lots of water changes
No indicators or parisites/hexamita on fish or their poop although one gourami got skinny. Clown loach is a good size.
I've always had trouble keeping nitrates down without water changes far in excess of recommendations on the web (20-25% a week instead of fortnight)'. Its possible nitrates got too high. Can’t figure out why so I've just tried to live with lots of changes by watering my pot plants/lawn a lot. My biofilter seems excellent with ammonia/nitrite always at zero. I use an in tank filter+external canister filter.
So Big Fish seems to be in a holding pattern. He doesn't appear to be getting worse but doesn’t appear to be getting better(and it looks bad, with one rather large hole in the head plus auxiliary ‘pimple craters’). He is eating but not with the customary gluttony, sometimes not at all. I'm relatively confident that the cause is gone or that its a parasite/disease I just can’t treat and will kill everything in the tank.
Last fact, experienced some ick/fish death after buying some fish from a new fish store (lesson learnt). That was at least 4 months ago.
So thats my story. I’d love to keep clown loaches as part of my tank if I can. so should I....
- wait and see
- buy some friends for big fish
- give up and have a 3 gourami tank! (which will still have high nitrates i swear! arrgh)
-something else
Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52855305@N02/
Tank-
Tall 4ft tank - 270ish litres (perhaps 250 once you take out gravel/rocks/plants). Its a ~78 gallon tank at 100% water full.
Filter -
Jebo 835 (1100Litres per hour though a lot lower than that with age of a few years) PLUS internal Fluval3plus (I dont like it, used to have a small Rena filstar that was smaller and sucked out more 'gunk')
Heater -
boring heater. hasn't turned on all summer! Plenty big enough for tank.
Stock -
1 8inch clown loach, 3 gourami (normal sized), one pretty fish I have no idea what its called and 3 tiny grey fish. Oh and a catfish you never see (but hes there! decent sized bristle nose). I'm under the 1 inch per gallon rule by a lot i think.
Plants/substrate
Just normal gravel you buy from fish stores everywhere(rounded, not sharp). Low light/weed like plants like the tank. No green algae blooms, just that nasty bearded black algae which I keep controlled with elbow grease.
Firstly ive had my Clown Loach 'Big Fish' for 8 years+, currently around 8 inches long. He was almost invincible, outliving every fish we got with our initial fish tank. Unfortunately his initial loachy friends all died off and hes too big to get new friends for, outcompeting them for food or generally outliving them when the water quality drops (or i just cant get the knack of getting those small fish shop loaches to live). I know a single clown loach is bad but he does seem quite OK after living years of the hermit lifestyle, good clolour, going nutty/clicky when food is dropped into the tank (trying to eat my fingers, gross).
I usually feed with community fish meaty bricks (1 cube a day) + frozen bloodworms and add some other flakes/crumbs for the 3 gouramis. Before he got Hole In The Head i had been feeding with chiclid based meaty bricks due to the shop running out of the usual stuff, other than that I cant think of a change that could have caused the disease.
Yep hes got Hole In the Head I've tried the following:
- Treating for hexamita with Flagyl soaked food (restricted drug in Australia, very difficult to get from vet, vet will not give much and I live in a small town so theres no fish vets)
- Garlic/broccoli (didnt eat it)
- Multivitamin add to his meatybricks. Now back to his normal diet of 'community' bricks plus bloodworms
- prazi treatment for whole tank just to be sure
-lots of water changes
No indicators or parisites/hexamita on fish or their poop although one gourami got skinny. Clown loach is a good size.
I've always had trouble keeping nitrates down without water changes far in excess of recommendations on the web (20-25% a week instead of fortnight)'. Its possible nitrates got too high. Can’t figure out why so I've just tried to live with lots of changes by watering my pot plants/lawn a lot. My biofilter seems excellent with ammonia/nitrite always at zero. I use an in tank filter+external canister filter.
So Big Fish seems to be in a holding pattern. He doesn't appear to be getting worse but doesn’t appear to be getting better(and it looks bad, with one rather large hole in the head plus auxiliary ‘pimple craters’). He is eating but not with the customary gluttony, sometimes not at all. I'm relatively confident that the cause is gone or that its a parasite/disease I just can’t treat and will kill everything in the tank.
Last fact, experienced some ick/fish death after buying some fish from a new fish store (lesson learnt). That was at least 4 months ago.
So thats my story. I’d love to keep clown loaches as part of my tank if I can. so should I....
- wait and see
- buy some friends for big fish
- give up and have a 3 gourami tank! (which will still have high nitrates i swear! arrgh)
-something else
Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52855305@N02/