Arg.. I just want some healthy Clown loaches.

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Cls are so to keep alice because they are scaleless which makes them super vunerable to disease like ich and are irritated by many medications also


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All the fish I get, grow well, are healthy and never give me problems. My clown loaches are a different story. Water parameters are excellent, I have over filtration to the max, and do 50 percent water changes every week. I have a small shoal in my planted 60 gallon,they are about 5 to 6 cm big. they all seem healthy active and eat well. Slowly one gets thinner and less active, and dies. The others all fine. A week or two later, one gets slowly thinner and less active, then dies. The others all fine fat and healthy, then slowly a week or two later, one gets slowly thinner and less active and dies. The others all healthy. This trend continues. Right now I have two healthy clowns left, and the third is now thin and less active. All my other fish in the tank are healthy and never exhibit this behaviour
 
Thanks everyone. The last of my loaches (my 4" favorite... oh man...) just died. I am absolutely BAFFLED by this disease. First of all, the Ich attack did absolutely NOTHING at all. Second, this "Ich" or whatever it really was decimated ALL 7 of my loaches one by one and didn't touch another fish. Everything I tried just seemed to do nothing whatsoever and what I think was Ich looked worse every day until they were just covered in white spots and died. They would be obviously having swim bladder problems and start to roll then jerk forward to catch their balance. That was the last symptom for all of them within their last 24 hours.

So I guess now that all my loaches are dead I just have a couple of questions:

What else could it have been? I keep thinking that it must not have been ich even though that's sure what it looked like. There has never been a single spot on any other fish in the tank including a 3" upside down cat that was also scaleless, ate the same food and did everything with the loaches.

Water temp has been a rock solid 88 degrees for weeks, I have tried salt, ich attack, etc..

So why is everyone else in the tank totally fine with no issues? I even had guppy fry show up during this and transplanted them to one of my other tanks to grow. The other fish in this tank were:

USD Catfish
4 black skirt Tetras
Balloon Molly
MM Platy
Various Guppies and spawn
 
They are extremely prone to ich because they are scaleless (this also makes them very sensitive to medications). I'm virtually sure this is what killed your fish. They also often come with internal parasites. When keeping clown loaches, you may as well just keep your tank at 86F+ all the time. It can help prevent ich outbreaks and they like fairly warm water anyways. They also appreciate a current and pristine water quality. Small ones are generally weaker than larger ones. Try to get them 2"+ to improve your odds. I wouldn't bother treating with medications, and just increase the temperature and add some salt, less than you would treating most other fish.

I have had only one outbreak of ich in all my time keeping loaches, and it was gone in about 5-6 days. The key is prevention, and treating it ASAP before it hardly gets a chance to start. Keep your water changes up first and foremost, temperature up, and add some salt if you see some ich starting to break out.

I wouldn't recommend clown loaches as a beginner fish.
 
I had good luck treating mine with Coppersafe. Otherwise once you manage to get rid of ich, as long as you isolate new arrivals you should be okay.

1.5 inchers go for around 8 dollars while 3 inches go for 25. I always go for the larger size.


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Iv always had badluck with cls. They always seem to get ich and die, now I just stay away from them.

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