What are the odds of my loaches surviving ich?
Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 12:33 pm
Hello,
We have 4 clown loaches; 2 adult and 2 baby. The adults have been with us for about 18 months (we adopted them when the previous owner moved away) and alongside them are 5 gold barbs, a swordtail and 2 neon tetra. We introduced the 2 baby loaches into the tank a few weeks ago as we read that loaches are happier in bigger groups.
So to get to the point; one of the loaches has definitely come down with white spot disease and it looks pretty bad, it's all over. As to the others; the second adult tends to hide away under their log a lot of the day and I haven't been able to get a close up look at him. One of the babies looks to have a couple of spots on his tale and the other one zips about too fast for me to see. Basically though they have all been exhibiting what I believe is called 'flashing' (?) and they look like they are itchy so I'm pretty sure they're all infected.
There are a couple of reasons I can think of that might have caused it, either;
1) We introduced the babies without quarantining them first (we didn't know about doing this).
2) We recently put in a couple of plants to ensure they had a good oxygen supply but again, we didn't know about quarantine.
3) About a month ago we changed the gravel and replaced it with aquarium sand. While doing this we followed all the advice from the shop; we kept the fish, filter, heaters and ornaments in buckets of the old tank water to keep some of the bacteria and minimise the shock of changing their environment. Despite all our best efforts though we lost about 8 neon tetra and a cherry barb (which is why we now only have 2 tetra) but the others all survived and as yet don't appear to be infected.
4) The weather has changed quite quickly from a warm autumn to cold winter conditions.
5) A combination of all the above!
I'm terrified that we've really messed things up and our poor little fish are suffering the consequences. For treatment I've decided not to use medication yet (I heard it might either not be effective at this stage or worse still it could well kill the fish as it's loaded with toxins) So I have just been slowly turning up the temperature to 28 degrees C over the course of today.
Now I have three main questions:
A) I know that warmer temperatures mean less oxygen in the water, can I supplement this with some oxygen tablets? Is it possible to over oxygenate the water and cause the fish harm?
B) I don't want to let the disease lie dormant in the sand even if I manage to get rid of it on the fish. Is it at all possible to clean the sand?
C) What are the chances of the fish surviving this disease? I would be so so sad to lose these awesome little creatures.
Many thanks for any advice you can give me.
Best wishes
We have 4 clown loaches; 2 adult and 2 baby. The adults have been with us for about 18 months (we adopted them when the previous owner moved away) and alongside them are 5 gold barbs, a swordtail and 2 neon tetra. We introduced the 2 baby loaches into the tank a few weeks ago as we read that loaches are happier in bigger groups.
So to get to the point; one of the loaches has definitely come down with white spot disease and it looks pretty bad, it's all over. As to the others; the second adult tends to hide away under their log a lot of the day and I haven't been able to get a close up look at him. One of the babies looks to have a couple of spots on his tale and the other one zips about too fast for me to see. Basically though they have all been exhibiting what I believe is called 'flashing' (?) and they look like they are itchy so I'm pretty sure they're all infected.
There are a couple of reasons I can think of that might have caused it, either;
1) We introduced the babies without quarantining them first (we didn't know about doing this).
2) We recently put in a couple of plants to ensure they had a good oxygen supply but again, we didn't know about quarantine.
3) About a month ago we changed the gravel and replaced it with aquarium sand. While doing this we followed all the advice from the shop; we kept the fish, filter, heaters and ornaments in buckets of the old tank water to keep some of the bacteria and minimise the shock of changing their environment. Despite all our best efforts though we lost about 8 neon tetra and a cherry barb (which is why we now only have 2 tetra) but the others all survived and as yet don't appear to be infected.
4) The weather has changed quite quickly from a warm autumn to cold winter conditions.
5) A combination of all the above!
I'm terrified that we've really messed things up and our poor little fish are suffering the consequences. For treatment I've decided not to use medication yet (I heard it might either not be effective at this stage or worse still it could well kill the fish as it's loaded with toxins) So I have just been slowly turning up the temperature to 28 degrees C over the course of today.
Now I have three main questions:
A) I know that warmer temperatures mean less oxygen in the water, can I supplement this with some oxygen tablets? Is it possible to over oxygenate the water and cause the fish harm?
B) I don't want to let the disease lie dormant in the sand even if I manage to get rid of it on the fish. Is it at all possible to clean the sand?
C) What are the chances of the fish surviving this disease? I would be so so sad to lose these awesome little creatures.
Many thanks for any advice you can give me.
Best wishes