Loaches Online Forum

Hey guys,

A total newbie here, but a clown loach aficionado for many years. In about the last year some of my loaches have popped up with this weird kind of white patch stuff over their backs and sides. It seems to just be on their slime coat... Not itchy...and it comes and goes in a week or two time. We have not added a new fish to the tank in 2+ years...

110 gallon acrylic tank...using well water, which is quite pure....no change in food for literally years...just find them all one day like this. This is not causing a die off...they just look ugly for a week or two. Wondering if the rocks in the aquarium are kind of sharp and they are skinning themselves up going in and out of the caves...

Any ideas?

Thanks! Paula


PS....two of the “affected” loaches are fairly large...like 6”...could it be the rock “caves” might be too small and the big guys are scraping themselves

Have a look at a disease with many names, but caused by one organism.
The organism is Flavobacterium columnare
Alternate names include Flex, Flexibacter (old name), Saddle Disease, Columnaris.
On fish medication packaging it might be called some kind of fungus. It is not.

In a large tank the best way to deal with it is medicated food. Use the recipe found here at Loaches, and incorporate a medicine such as Kanamycin. Let me see if I can find some links...

Home made frozen food. Make a batch, then divide it into however much to which you want to add medicine.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16732

How to add Kanamycin (Seachem Kana-Plex) to food. Dosing, other additives.
http://www.seachem.com/kanaplex.php

Diana,

Thank you so much for all of that info. I really am pretty convinced this is not a bacterial (or fungal) thing. It comes and goes a few times a year, there is never any die off and the fish never act sick in any way. For lack of a better description, this seems to be purely cosmetic. Further it is never really on fins or gills. It never touches any other fish...only the clowns. Hopefully this really short video will help.

https://youtu.be/MNfO5uk-MSo

Thanks! Paula

The pictures sure help.
This does not look like Flavobacteria.

That heavier patch does indeed look like an excess & shedding of slime coat.
My guess is that there is some sort of irritant. Examples:
Are they lying against the heater? Could this be burns? If you have a heater near the bottom of the tank, especially if it is horizontal, change it to a more standard set up: vertical, and closer to the surface.
Any other irritant in the system? Chemistry changes perhaps with water changes? Does the timing seem to coordinate?
Something they are rubbing against? (rock, wood...) (does not really look like this)

No, no way they can get to the heater.

And water changes never seem to change anything.

We are going to remodel the tank interior and remove the current rocks that have holes in them, providing hiding spots. One thought is as the clowns have grown, the rocks obviously have not. I am wondering if these are some kind of abrasions on their slime coats from scraping up against the edges of the rocks...

Next week is remodeling week...

It might be abrasions as you suggest.
It does not matter if they don't seem to line up with the fish: Loaches may take any orientation they want, so might be lying sideways or upside down as they go through a tight spot in the rocks.

I agree that rocks grow only very slowly. Fish grow a lot faster.

Well,

We have completely remodeled our tank with different rock...allowing for much bigger holes in the rock and lots of loach hiding/lounging spots.

After about 24/36 hours they have chilled and seem to be quite happy with the changes. We have moved rock away from the back of the tank, toward the bottom and given them MUCH more room for their zoomies and fish Olympics I hear in the late evenings.

The white spots are healing/going away....and nothing new is popping up.....so hopefully we have gotten to the bottom of this problem!

Trying to post a picture of the new layout, but my web ignorance is showing!

Paula

Glad to hear the problem seems to be resolving

New tank set up

http://s1111.photobucket.com/component/ ... 7E73C.jpeg


Paula