"Patchy Disease in Hillstream Loaches"

[Nick Hancock]

Do we know anything more about this from the locked post above?

I'm dealing with a nasty bout of it right now--came home last night to find what hours before had seemed like a perfectly healthy S. lineolata (the one from my sexing question post, in fact) dead, and another (my largest) with his colors washing out to a sickly looking light tan. My others do not seem to be affected, but then again, neither did the dead one, and the one I lost did not seem to have the general, body-wide discoloration being displayed now by the larger male. Just white patches running the length of the back that did not appear to be external growths.

There have been no new Sewellia additions to this tank since it was set up. It housed four new, small clown loaches from about mid month to Monday at which point they were moved to a more suitable habitat and have shown no signs of stress.

Ammonia did creep up to about .25 as I asked someone to feed for me during a work trip and they were a bit heavy handed--could this disease have been held at bay by immune systems until the ammonia crept up?

I'm treating now per Jim Powers' article. Just curious if anyone knows any more about this disease since it was previously posted.

Thanks

[mikev]

A little more.

The article you are referring to is misleading IME, it is an attempt to generalize from a couple of cases that were not even diagnosed.

There is no such thing as "patchy disease", rather there is a symptom of loss of coloration that may be due to multiple caused, simply hillstreams that are ill or under massive stress are unable to maintain the coloration. The root cause may be indeed a bacterial infection or something totally different, so naturally minocycline (or any other med) may or may not work, and some other med may or may not work either. As just one example, I had a couple of episodes where minocycline failed totally but furan2 was instantly effective,... but then I also had episodes where nothing worked.

Post photos, maybe this would provide some information.

As for 0.25 ammonia: I recall you mentioned ph=6.8? Then this is not too dangerous (assuming you measured correctly). Now, if you got nitrites up too, this would be more serious (check!).

And how long have you owned the fish? It could be simply normal incubation time for the disease.

[Nick Hancock]

I got the majority fish no more than 6 weeks ago, but the one that died sometime in the night I had for at least 8 months prior in a community tank (which wouldn't matter if it picked up a contagion, I guess). Unfortunately, I lost the discolored fish minutes after I posted that. Whatever this is, it has set in extremely quick. My other stock looks fine, but this ailment doesn't seem to yield much warning.

I have never had a nitrate issue in this tank, but I'll double check it again. I just bought liquid kits. Also, I will post a photo taken earlier when I get home.

Thanks mikev

[mikev]

nitrItes, not nitrates. probably not this, but do check. And do check pH and kH too please (hopefully you did not do a w/c yet).

Whatever this is, it has set in extremely quick.

as a working hypothesis, some disease brought in by the new fish with pathogen reaching the critical levels now. Given that you do not know what the disease is (could be bacterial, could be protozoan, could be something else too) if the situation looks threatening (more symptoms or losses), you may have to aggressively treat for both.