Loaches Online Forum

Jim Powers wrote:Interesting observations on the whole patchy disease situation.

Would be quite nice if you could throw some more data on this my way. Anything you could think of.

And specifically, if you exposed, accidentally or deliberately, any other species to the primary disease: botias, pangios, plecos, livebearers, barbs.....

Further, do you recall having any other secondaries at the time of the outbreak(s): ich, fungus, red dots, anything of this nature.

Nice looking SpA's you have there.

You should have seen them live. It takes me a few minutes every morning to count them -- not because they are hiding, they just move and fight all the time.

The head looks too broad and shovel shaped for disparis, especially the one in the back of the bottom pic.

Been looking at pictures and fish all morning and unsure. Graeme's disparis (

http://www.loaches.com/species_images/l ... _small.jpg

) was always the best match to mine, and his head is similar to *smaller* SpA's. Is the head shape a general characteristics of the Homaloptera genus?

Oh well, if you are positive, we shall call it Neohomaloptera Powersi -- since you did most of the ID'ng -- and I'll write a profile for the Wiki site someone set up. Should take a year or two before it is recognized as a new species.

Other observations: The only one I can think of is that I spread the disease to a botia tank through infected snails after thinking the disease was eliminated. It wiped out every botia and schistura but did not effect the praecox rainbows. The tank was treated and the disease has never returned. The botias went down fast and usually would have some white "gunk" on the skin. Not sure if it was a secondary bacterial growth or excess mucous. The symptoms included hiding, heavy respiration and loss of appetite.

As for Neohomaloptera poweri, while that would be cool, I think your fish might already have a name
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v470/ ... wensis.jpg

Compare to this:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v470/ ... is_juv.jpg

Notice this fish was misidentified originally as a Vanmanenia juvenile,but is now considered a disparis.

@botia: interesting. IME, columnaries did not infect botias, but then columnaries have many strains. (Sadly, I do have two in the affected tank, but they seem to be ok so far.) IMHO, transmission via snails is far more likely for a bacterial agent than a virus....I'll ask about this. Also, I think I recall that columnaries can stay in soil for long time ::=> it may be that your fish is actually clean, or can be cleaned by a stay in an empty tank under UV.

The best way to test what I wrote above and resolve this mess btw is probably sacrifice a few livebearers for experiments around your tank.

======================

@SpA etc. vanmanenia genus is actually a spinoff from homalaptera. Vanmanenia_pingchowensis does seem to be a *slightly* better match, but this all may be within one species variation.

Maybe the only way to resolve this is for me to try to get some disparis and mix them. Obviously, not any time soon, and I have to make sure that SpA's stay alive yet.

(Thanks for the link to these excellent pics)

@erromyzon:

Hmm, Jim, looks like you are right again. I visited the little guy today, he is fine, but they added one other small fish to the tank. Have no idea what the fish is (not a loach, and probably not a cyprinid), but it is developing irregular color patches on its head all right. Was in the tank for less than four days.

Fascinating how these infections work.... the barbs who were in the tank for a month are perfect.

Interesting... The store may have a problem on its hands.

Jim Powers wrote:Interesting... The store may have a problem on its hands.

They probably don't, this thing does not seem to spread through the central UV....or this strand is really selective to the type of fish. I've been watching the tanks around to see if problems show up -- every little bit of data is helpful -- they don't. I'll try to ID the other fish tomorrow, unf. it is of the type I've never paid attention to before.

(This is really fascinating -- this erromyzon may be a Typhoid Mary reincarnate !:shock:)

I, OTOH, do have a problem. They have more "little gray things" and a pretty attractive ones too and even not from HK.... Gastros, some certain ctenocephalus, most something else .. dotted like punctulatus but I don't think they actually are punctulatus or appear on LOL. I'll go take a more careful look tomorrow but the patchy thing at least not visible...yet.

I probably should stay away from sucker types until I have a sure way of dealing with my brand of the patchy disease -- it is very much sucker-biased here......

One Q: Do you happen to know if it is normal for gastros to be of light brown/orange color? About a third of them were, but it did not look like any kind of sickness to me....only very strange...

I really don't know if there are any gastros that color. There are many species so its hard to say without knowing what they are.

mikev wrote:One Q: Do you happen to know if it is normal for gastros to be of light brown/orange color? About a third of them were, but it did not look like any kind of sickness to me....only very strange...

mikev, were the light brown/orange ones resting on a particular substrate? I only ask because the last batch of assorted Gastromyzon/Pseudogatromyzons I got from Indonesia appeared to be able to change colour to match the substrate, in this case silica sand - which is a goldy-brown sort of colour. Until that point, I had only observed such dramatic colour change capabilities with Homaloptera sp. so at first I was quite alarmed. But I observed them for some time, and they remained healthy and appeared to be able to change colour at will. I think I have some photos somewhere on my old computer, I'll try and dig them out.

Emma

I have seen the gastros that I have (scitulus, ctenocephalus, oscellatus and an unknown sp.) all lighten up considerably when resting on a light colored rock, but never to an orange color. But, come to think of it, Martin has had an unknown species that would turn almost yellow when sitting on plant leaves.

Emma Turner wrote: mikev, were the light brown/orange ones resting on a particular substrate? I only ask because the last batch of assorted Gastromyzon/Pseudogatromyzons I got from Indonesia appeared to be able ....

The effect is totally gone overnight---they have normal colors. But I think your guess may be correct --- while I saw them in an empty tank (bare glass, no substrate) they were acclimated in a red bucket and perhaps retained the bucket color for at least twenty minutes. (I've noticed before that Gastros are quite slow in adjusting colors comparing to other hillstreams.)
Either this or an aftereffect of being shipped, but no fancy orange today, and the colors and tails today on the dotted ones are consistent with punctulatus. Sorry, does not seem like this batch has anything unusual to report.

Well, with a possible exception of yet another disease: bright red spots/lines on the bottoms of many of them.



or, worse:



Does it really have to be like this?...again and again?

I think my interest in this new disease will be satisfied by watching its progress at the store, not at home.


If you know what the thing below is, it is to be added to the list of the species that get patchy disease.

The fish in the top pic looks like an oscellatus and, unfortunately,the red streaks look like septicemia. What is it with the hillstreams at this store?
I wouldn't necessarily relate this to patchy disease, though.

The fish at the bottom looks like some sort of a halfbeak, but I'm not for sure.

I agree. It looks like Dermogenys sumatrana, a freshwater halfbeak. I believe they are livebearers. Isn't this consistent with your previous observations wtih the disease and livebearers?

I wouldn't mind having a few of those...it is unfortunate that they are sick.

I'd say that the halfbeak is likely to be an unsettled-looking (and hence pale) Nomorhamphus liemi . It is the most common halfbeak found in the trade and usually gets erroneously labelled as the Celebes halfbeak.

Emma

TammyLiz wrote:I agree. It looks like Dermogenys sumatrana, a freshwater halfbeak. I believe they are livebearers. Isn't this consistent with your previous observations wtih the disease and livebearers?

Nice confirmation, if you ID'd the fish right. It has been theoritized that the patchy disease (and perhaps the "linked" no-patchy disease as well), if connected to Columnari, should be pretty bad for the livebearers. In fact, this may be the way to test the safety of a post-treatment tank (like the one Jim described above). This fish may be a proof that livebearers can indeed be used this way (I know, not nice...).

As I said there is a remote chance that my treatment is working (7 days no deaths now), it may even work in Jim's tank, in which case having a test fish would be quite helpful.

Jim wrote:What is it with the hillstreams at this store?

This and other diseases are not the store's fault. The shipment came in yesterday night (from SG), and I saw a couple of small red streaks yesterday, but did not realize the significance. What is wrong with the store is that they actually are selling this fish right now.

I wouldn't necessarily relate this to patchy disease, though.

I don't, but patchy may be there too (inconclusive), or something else. I'm not taking chances this time; even being able to treat septicemia (asaik tetrocycline is quite effective, and so should be Maracyn2) would not help, there probably is a worse illness beneath.

Very funny so far:
Round 1: Easy Illness: Ich, Hiding behind: Nematodes
Round 2: Easy Illness: Patchy, Hiding behind: GramPos non-Patchy Sucker Killer
Round 3: Easy Illness: Septicemia, Hiding behind: ***I DON"T WANT TO KNOW***

TammyLiz wrote:I wouldn't mind having a few of those...it is unfortunate that they are sick.

I had one, but the Cheni disease (courtesy of the same store) killed the poor guy. I still would like to have a few, of course.... ASAIK, Gastros are actually not all that rare, so there will be a chance.

Or maybe there is some way to buy from Emma.... I would not mind to pay double, if I don't have to deal with the diseases just one time...