Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

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Beee Haven
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Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Beee Haven » Sat May 09, 2015 8:16 am

* Type of fish that are affected - Weather loach
* How long has the tank been set up for? - Six or seven months
* Size of tank - 36" x 12" x 18" - 33.66 gallons
* How is the tank being filtered? - 1000l/h internal filter with sponge media & activated carbon pellets
* Water temperature. - at 70°F
* Your maintenance regime - 16% water change fortnightly, rinse filter sponge media in the discarded water and change half of the carbon pellets (canister for the carbon has two separate ends)
* Has anything new been added to the tank recently? - nothing since ramshorn snails were added in January
* What other fish are in the tank? - another weather loach and 3 goldfish (also several ramshorn snails)
* As detailed a description as possible of the symptoms the fish are exhibiting. - ALL the other fish are showing no symptoms/perfectly healthy, including the other weather loach. Only yesterday noticed the largest of the weather loach (still quite small, between four and five inches long) appears to have lost ALL of his (dont actually know the gender) barbels and is looking muted/dull colour wise. He's been spending a lot of time sitting on the top suckers behind the filter though he has been swimming about too, more so today than yesterday actually, he's swimming about now, he was particularly lethargic yesterday and I thought I was losing him. He also appears a little 'kinked'. I haven't noticed him eating either, he wouldn't eat from my hand when I tried, but I've not tried that before. I've put a couple of pellets inside the biggest skull ornament where the goldfish cant go. I'm VERY worried about him as the loaches are my favourite fish (I know I shouldn't have favourites but cant help it they're such fascinating wee creatures) and would appreciate ANY advice as to what to do. Am even considering trying to re-home the goldfish if it's maybe from bullying, but if it's another problem I could treat or anything..... I need help please!
* How long ago the affected fish were added to the tank, and how long the fish have been displaying symptoms. - they were all introduced together, about five months ago after cycling the tank, only noticed the symptoms yesterday (they do hide a lot, usually only see them as streaks zipping about the tank)
* Your current water parameters - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH. - ammonia is zero - 0.25, nitrite is at zero, nitrate was quite high between 20 and 40 (using API master test kit so colours are tricky to get entirely accurate result, setting up another water change now and shopping for new plants as current plants are worse for wear between the goldfish and the snails. pH is 7.4.

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mikev
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by mikev » Sat May 09, 2015 2:41 pm

What kind of substrate do you have? Do you see any signs of ongoing infection in the barbel area?

The cause is most likely bacterial ... I do not know if barbels can ever recover, for a cory loss of barbels would be effectively a death sentence, for dojo -- unclear. You can try treating with antibiotics.

Beee Haven
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Beee Haven » Sat May 09, 2015 7:07 pm

The substrate is fine sand. Less than two inches at it's deepest. Would it be worth trying some melafix do you think?

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mikev
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by mikev » Sun May 10, 2015 12:49 am

Melafix would be a waste of time. If anything, try real antibiotic like furan2 and/or kanamycin.

Beee Haven
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Beee Haven » Sun May 10, 2015 7:01 am

Thank you for the advice - I can only really get hold of FISHMOX amoxicillin antibiotics here in the UK. Should I be treating the whole tank or setting up a quarantine tank for him? I've never had to deal with just one fish being affected before.

My partner told me late last night that he remembered the loach in question was maybe 'fighting' with a goldfish over a snail a few days ago (he thought they were both 'playing' with it at the time), could it be that he's got an injury from that? Would that still require antibiotics?

Should I separate him into a smaller tank? Would I need to take water from the current tank and media from the filter for quarantine tank? Or would I have to wait to cycle it fully? Sorry for all the questions, but I just want to do all the right things.

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mikev
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by mikev » Sun May 10, 2015 9:38 am

It is hard for me to imagine that fighting with a goldfish would result in losing all barbels....
Should I be treating the whole tank or setting up a quarantine tank for him? I've never had to deal with just one fish being affected before.
This does happen once in a while. For example, with flex (columnaris) infection which tends to affect only some fish, the rest have enough immunity not to catch it even when the bacteria is present in the tank. This particular infection manifests itself in several ways including mouth rot (barbel rot)... this is why I asked above to check the mouth of the fish to see if you have signs of an ongoing infection there, this matters. And when it is possible to try treating just one fish it is safer this way.
OTOH, amoxicillin is a very old weak antibiotic.... donno... perhaps there is something else more powerful available, like Fish Doxy from the same company? Perhaps you can ask some people from the UK?
Would I need to take water from the current tank and media from the filter for quarantine tank? Or would I have to wait to cycle it fully?
if you do decide to treat in a small tank, you can take part of the media, or simply not cycle the tank at all --- just do large daily water changes for the duration of the treatment, feed lightly, and use some ammonia removal tool (Prime for instance) to suppress the residual ammonia.

Diana
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Diana » Sun May 10, 2015 9:55 am

Your tank is way too small for these species.
Do a lot more, and larger water changes to keep the NO3 below 10ppm.

Plants that Golds do not eat are not great at removing NO3 from the tank. Remove the Golds.

To keep a similar tank, look into fish more appropriate to the size of the tank:
Rosy Barbs or some other Barbs instead of golds.
Kuhlie Loaches, Pepper Loaches (one of the Lepidocephthalichthys)
38 tanks, 2 ponds over 4000 liters of water to keep clean and fresh.

Happy fish keeping!

Loachloach
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Loachloach » Sun May 10, 2015 10:03 am

I am not experienced with loach barbels but I had an issue with my corys barbels once. This happened after I decided to replace river gravel with sand specifically for the corys but I picked the wrong sand. I wanted black sand and ended up with some sort of sand from volcanic origin, labelled safe for bottom feeders. It destroyed my corys barbels in a matter of 2 months, caused bacterial infections too as far as I could tell as it spread to their mouths. When I felt that sand between my fingers eventually it was sharp, was hurting my fingers! And it had also gone anaerobic, I don't know why as I have all my tanks with sand and just this sand caused issues, and pretty fast too.... But it was not quartz based sand so not really sand at all...

My experience is most of the corys grew their barbels back fully, nice and long, a few only didn't but are still healthy and alive 3 years after.

What I did was, remove the sand immediately, replaced with normal sand I had used with corys without a problem, treated with seachem kanaplex as Mike suggested, did large water changes for at least 2-3 weeks almost daily, etc.. All was fine since and the barbels slowly regrew. Corys can live with missing barbels normally. I don't know if they can spawn but they can eat, dig in the sand, especially when I hide blood worms in the sand, and generally live normally :) With loaches, I don't know the process with barbels and how it affects them but it could be similar.

If it's affecting one fish, I'd setup a temporary tank. You can even use one of those big plastic containers. Put fine play sand at the bottom just to cover it as otherwise bare bottom develops harmful bacteria, a filter with cycled media is best as doing 100% water changes otherwise is stressful, but it's still best to do daily partial water changes to keep it tip top quality, and make sure there's plenty of oxygen. Follow an antibacterial treatment as Mike suggested, Seachem Kanaplex is a good option, then do partial water changes as often as you can on the tank for the next couple of weeks after the treatment and feed good quality food, remove any remaining food. The barbels won't regrow in a short period of time but the fish should improve and hopefully recover the barbels.

In the main tank, I'd do a pretty good substrate clean and check for anaerobic issues under décor, etc.., especially where the loach likes to hide too. 2 inches of sand is a lot of sand. I use half that the most and normally don't have "dead" zones but my sand is slightly larger than play sand and doesn't compact at all. I have play sand in one tank only which is very fine and I have half an inch of it the most because of that. It's plenty of coverage.

Beee Haven
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Beee Haven » Mon May 11, 2015 9:10 am

Going to put a sign in my local pet shop to try and find a GOOD home for the goldfish - somebody with bigger tanks or a pond that has protection over it so they dont end up as being food for the herons. There are a lot of herons around here, so anybody local with a pond should've learned that lesson already!

Also managed to borrow a bigger tank for quarantine than the one I had and am in the midst of setting that up right now. The main tank has had melafix in it for the last couple of days while I await the delivery of the antibiotics (I live in the sticks and don't drive) and poorly loachy is actually seeming a bit more perky already, he's been zipping about a bit more and looked like he was eating too, I was worried he'd not find food without his barbels. Still going to separate him into his own tank for a short while to give him antibiotics and a bit more of a chance to recover.

Will move the decor etc and check the sand's clean in the main tank too, it's only two inches deep in a few places, it barely covers the floor in other spots so I'll level that out more, it was only really deeper in areas I'd planted with the elodea and attempted to hold down into place with ornaments... which didn't work.

A lot to be getting on with. Thank you so very much for all your advice, I'm generally not that bad when it comes to researching things I need to know, but there's SO much contrasting information on the internet when it comes to poorly fish, so it's good to get some that's consistent.

Oh! One other thing... if I do spot an ammonia spike and use some zeolite in the quarantine tank (in a small bag so I could remove it and 're-charge' it), would that interfere with the medication in any way like the activated carbon does?

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mikev
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by mikev » Mon May 11, 2015 10:27 am

No need to look for a very large quarantine tank, 10g should be ok. The larger is the tank size the more meds you will have to use and -- if the cycle crashes -- the more water changes you will have to do.

The treatment tank should be empty, no substrate, so no need to really set it up. You can put in a PVC for the fish to hide. (Substrate is generally a very bad idea since it will absorb some of the medication).

Zeolite should be ok. I prefer using Prime.

Good luck!

Beee Haven
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Beee Haven » Wed May 13, 2015 3:40 am

Oh dear - I set it up with a layer of substrate after reading somewhere that a bare base could potentially cause issues with other bacteria.

Should I try to syphon as much of it out as possible with today's water change? The meds say to do a small water change before each dose. Have some of the filter media from the old tank in the small filter, along with around 80% of the water in the quarantine tank being taken from the main.

He still doesn't appear to have eaten anything either. I put half a pea in there last night, he'd usually have been right on that. It's still there :'(

Loachloach
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Loachloach » Wed May 13, 2015 6:49 am

I would leave the substrate as this is a bottom feeder and bacteria does develop on uncovered bottom unless you wipe it twice a day, but it needs to be a very thin layer, just enough to cover the bottom, and a new substrate, not old one from the tank.
The meds say to do a small water change before each dose. Have some of the filter media from the old tank in the small filter, along with around 80% of the water in the quarantine tank being taken from the main.
Do large water changes, 50-80% daily! You need clean water! not water full of the bacteria that affected him. Make sure to exchange all that old water with new tap water gradually in a day if there's a vast difference, if not, just do water changes with tap water(dechlorinated and temperature matched) and while treating, large water changes daily, don't mind what the instructions say. My tank water doesn't differ tap and tank because I do large water changes on the main tanks so if I pull a fish out, it goes into tap water and they've got no problems with that.
Then redose meds by the amount required each day for the duration of the treatment, then keep up with daily large water changes for a while.
Also, some fish won't start eating during treatment so don't let that get to you. You are doing all you can for the loach.

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mikev
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by mikev » Wed May 13, 2015 10:28 am

Beee Haven wrote:Oh dear - I set it up with a layer of substrate after reading somewhere that a bare base could potentially cause issues with other bacteria.
This is *potentially* and takes very long time (many months) to develop if ever. I had no problems with keeping loaches and corydoras in a bare tank for extended period of time.

The reason for not having substrate: it absorbs some of the medication, you end up with a lower dose dissolved in the tank. Similarly, driftwood and plants might absorb it too. PVC's are the best in this way.

If it is a very thin layer, let it be. If it is 0.5" or so, best take it out before dosing.


He still doesn't appear to have eaten anything either. I put half a pea in there last night, he'd usually have been right on that. It's still there :'(
not eating in a new tank is not an uncommon reaction from an adult fish ... try frozen bloodworms ...

Beee Haven
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by Beee Haven » Wed May 20, 2015 8:24 am

He appears to be doing SO much better now - is far brighter, more active, eating/defecating and generally seeming much happier in himself. No sign of any barbels growing back, but he's detecting the presence of food as soon as it's put into the tank.

The question now, is would it be ok to reintroduce him into the community tank? The goldfish have been re-homed into a large pond with netting (to protect from the herons), so I'm happy that they're in a better place, and have been replaced with six white cloud mountain minnows and six zebra danios. Have done several water changes in the main tank and cleaned the sand the best I could - it's also got several new plants (that were rinsed LOTS before adding), I also did put a little melafix into the bigger tank when I introduced the new fish that seem to have settled in really well. Oh, I'm also re-homing the ramshorn snails (as they strip the plants despite having cucumber & carrot regularly to feed on) and replacing them with two malaysian trumpet snails that should arrive tomorrow hopefully (to prevent pockets in the sand).

I'll be going away for a week on Friday and cant expect my friend (who'll be dropping in twice daily to feed my cat and the fish) to do the water changes and continue medicating the quarantine tank as she's a busy mother of three with pets herself, one of whom is recovering from a recent operation.

If I do add him back in on Friday before going away, should I do a prophylactic dose of the anti-biotic medication in the main tank?

Am so grateful for the advice I've already received and would welcome any more. Thank you so very much.

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mikev
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Re: Weather loach missing barbels. Please help!

Post by mikev » Wed May 20, 2015 11:14 am

He appears to be doing SO much better now
Sounds like job well done, congratulations!

So what was the treatment exactly?

As for moving the fish back: I'd not just yet. General rule: do not do changes/treatments when you are not around to observe. Your fish may be lonely in the qtank, but this is not harmful by itself. Let him recuperate a bit longer and feed well if he eats well.
should I do a prophylactic dose of the anti-biotic medication in the main tank
No. Antibiotics should not be used as prophylactic and you don't want to gamble on cycle in the main tank. Do an extra w/c if anything and clean the gravel in the main tank, this never harms.

as for the goldfish: good move. You could have gotten some slightly larger dither with 33g (there are larger danio/rasbora species than zebras, for example and some are better looking too) ... but your choice is fine and this will make the tank cleaner.

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