Loaches Online Forum

I've had a couple of loaches now, and while they are in quarantine, very early on, they seem to get a whitish "peeling" "skin" on them, and they seem to die slowly. My pH, when I tested today, was a bit on the acidic side, but we're trying to raise it a bit, slowly. This happened to another couple of loaches, that also eventually died.

These were both sets of new loaches, and all were drip acclimated over the course of at least an hour. They'll sit listlessly on the bottom, and then occasionally flip out, twitching all over the tank.

I don't know if it's something I'm doing wrong, something in my water parameters, or what. My tanks often run a bit hard, and lately, a bit acidic. I can't give exact numbers, because I've lost the key to my test strips.

What brand of test kit are you using, and what color is it?

This sounds like a water quality issue: The white stuff coming off the fish is likely slime coat, the fish produce excess when there is an irritant in the tank. The changing pH that you are describing may very well also be connected with a drop int he GH, KH and TDS (total dissolved solids) so the fish are also suffering from osmotic shock.

I'm using the Jungle 5-in-1 test strips.

I'd been using the strips, and though I don't have a key (the bottle got tossed, and the strips must have fallen out at some point), I can still recognize that the colors are roughly the same as those I've been consistently getting, except with a lower pH. The hardness is about a medium hardness, the pH rather low and acidic. The ammonia levels are just a shade above 0. The first square, which I think is nitrate, has been a little dark, meaning it's a little high. These readings have been consistent in my tanks, but this is going to be different for fish coming from the store.

I"ve posted about my tank readings before, and how it's hard to get the hardness down-- I've put new gravel in, etc, but all my tank read like this. I think the nitrate and ammonia levels are a bit high to be acceptable, though, and I think I'm going to try and just get money back on the loaches ,and try working on the tank levels before I try again.

However, when I do get more, what is the amount of time suggested to acclimate loaches?

I bought some australian rainbows as well, and only has died, which leads me to believe I rushed acclimation, since there is def a difference between my tanks, and the store water.

is this anything like what your fish are like?.
i hope your luckier than me if it's this, i lost over a dozen and could only save one fish.
to this day i have no idea what it was.


mick

A bit like that, yes, except over a bigger area. It looks like someone said, the slime coat is sort of peeling off of them.

I worry that I've been rushing acclimation, and that my water is just too different from the store water.

i have another pic that was taken the next day, will post that up in a sec.

mick
found it.

Eeiks... that looks scary. But saw something similar on a garra sp. in wild on a rock collection trip (around a month back). Not sure, but might be something seasonal.

Jungle test strips:
1- Nitrate. Shades of pink. Pale pink is OK, anything darker = do a water change. There are several shades of deeper pink, but I cannot tell them apart. Palest pink is 20 ppm.

2- Nitrite. Shades of pink. Ought to be white. ANY shade of pink is bad. Do enough water changes to keep it as pale as possible and add 1 teaspoon of salt per 20 gallons of water until the test reads consistently white. Palest pink is .5 ppm.

3- GH. reads from olive-green through shades of brown to a reddish-brown.
Green = 0 ppm = 0 degrees
Olive= 25 ppm = 1.5 degrees
murky brown = 75 ppm = 4 degrees
(all the above are soft or very soft water)
some hint of redness to the brown = 150 ppm = 8.5 degrees
(A bit harder, but fine for most fresh water community fish)
almost red shade of brown = 300 ppm = 17 degrees
(Liquid Rock- fine for Rift Lake Cichlids)

4- KH, Carbonates. Reads from yellow ( 0 ppm) through shades of green to blue-green, almost teal.
Yellow-green = 40 ppm = 2 degrees
slightly deeper yellow green = 80 ppm = 4.5 degrees
hint of blue in the green = 120 ppm = 7 degrees
(All the above are fine for most common fish)
noticeably blue-green = 150 ppm = 8.5 degrees
(A little on the hard side, but still OK)
teal (well, a little greener than teal, but close) = 300 ppm. = 17 degrees. Liquid Rock.
The higher the KH it is likely the pH will also be high, and it is harder to alter the pH if the KH is high.

5- pH. Scale reads from yellow (6.2) to an almost hot pink shade of orange-red (8.4)
yellow = 6.2
Too low for most community fish, and suggests there may be a problem such as old tank syndrome.
orange orange = 6.8
closer to red = 7.2
6.5-7.5 are fine for most fresh water community fish.
redder-pinkish = 7.8
Fine for Rift Lake Cichlids, livebearers and certain other fish. Soft water fish may adapt to it, but not all will handle this high pH.
Almost hot pink shade of red = 8.4
Too high for most soft water fish.

The strips that are not kept clean and dry will age very fast and become worthless. If you have any silica-pacs I would put the remaining strips in a zip-lok baggie with a silica pac and use them as soon as reasonable.
Pick up another bottle, but keep it factory sealed. You can use the label on the new bottle. The new ones are 6-way strips, with Chlorine in between GH and KH. Scale reads in shades of lavender-pink.


Part of reading the test strips is indeed noting if you are seeing any changes from the past reading. I am not sure if the actual results are too accurate, and I know that interpreting the colors is tricky, with 2 major problems:
Some colors are so similar it is difficult to know which is the proper reading. This is very common with the nitrate, which is why I say if it is any shade darker than pale pink (hot pink, Fuchsia, deep pink...) it does not matter, just do a water change.
and
Some tabs actually change color in patches. I find the pH and the KH do this. I have seen a yellow-green tab on the KH (40 to 80 ppm) streaked with teal (150-300 ppm). What on earth do I call that? and pH tab will be mostly yellow-orange (slightly acidic or neutral), but has a distinct edging of the red-orange-deep pink (whatever it is!) that means much more alkaline.

The first picture posted by Mick looks like Flavobacteria columnaris. There seem to be several strains of this bacteria. One moves so fast that the fish can go from a little clouding of the skin to dead in 24 hours. The fast change (second pic 24 hours after the first) suggests a fast moving problem, whichever it is.

There are more diseases and issues than just Flex (based on the old name for this bacteria) that could cause this.

The fins and scales falling off is also a symptom of severe osmotic shock. It could be bacterial also though.

mickthefish wrote:i have another pic that was taken the next day, will post that up in a sec.

mick
found it.

I had 17 lemon tetras in a 29 gallon planted tank and lost one after another to something similar. A fish would get a lesion and the lesion(s) would increase in number or size and then the fish would die. At first I thought that it may have been a dominant fish harassing the others in a small tank, but this continued to occur after I moved the tetras to a 65 AGA tank. I now have only 7 lemon tetras and the fish keep on being afflicted with this condition. I am resigned to losing all my lemon tetras.

Feyna, do your loaches happen to have white spots on them, too? I added 4 to the 8 CLs in my tank without quarantining and now I am so mad at myself! I had an outbreak of ich and ironically the clowns that are dying first are the ones that I have had the longest. They do show that white slimy peeling skin that you were describing. Really upsetting losing 4, and I am surely going to lose 2 more by tomorrow morning. Really terrible thing to see . I know, I know, I knew better! Please, no yelling! Already very sad about my dead clowns ....

Is this white slimy skin all part of the cycle of a fish that's infected with ich? I thought that they would just have the white spots. Or is this slimy skin a stress induced reaction to being medicated and would show up with several different types of infection/diseases?

Excess slime is a common reaction to any irritant:
pH
Salt
Medicines
Ammonia
Nitrites
Any of several diseases and parasites.

Ich and Super Ich will show white spots. Perhaps not at first, as both parasites can lodge inside the gills at first. The fish will flash, and show respiratory distress, but within a few days will show white spots on the outside of the fish. As the parasites attack the outside of the fish the fish can produce more slime coat in an attempt to remove the parasites. Ich (the older form that has been around quite a while) will show irregular areas where the spots may be grouped together, and some spots scattered. Super Ich seems to show up as wider scattered spots, not so much grouped together.
Ich will respond to almost any medicine, salt and heat or other treatment. Super Ich is resistant to most medicines, and to heat (at least temperature that is not too hot for the fish)

http://www.nationalfishpharm.com/fish_d ... rders.html

Here is a link to skin diseases of tropical fish. There are even more diseases to be found at that site that may show some symptoms of slime coat or skin problems. Have a look at the 'Bacteria' tab.

Yikes... that could very easily be a bacteria eating away at the fish's exterior. I have very very rarely seen water quality causing as large a problem as that. Minor (though possibly fatal) burns might come from the hardness and acidity, or perhaps from excessive ammonia/fish waste, but my tanks have also run with very hard water and a pH of about 6.0-6.5 (some people have kept loaches at an even lower pH) and while those parameters might not be the most suitable for the fish, in the last decade or so that I have owned fish, I haven't seen those symptoms. That is why I suspect bacteria here.

TDS is also not likely to cause this type of issue, unless the dissolved solids are toxic... I've raised the TDS of my tank very high into the thousands--I think I hit 4000 TDS when 120 or so is preferable--but I reached that amount by adding aquarium salt to the tank. Hardly toxic, but my fish at the time were having "acne" issues.

I'm having my own problems at the moment with completely inexplicable and extremely fast deaths, so I feel the pain

I'd kill that fish.
too far gone...sad to see.