I can never seem to keep clown loaches alive. This is my 3rd time this week that the loaches did not make it overnight. All the fish seem fine.
clown loaches
- Thread starter VVateverzYo
- Start date
i put the fish in the tank and then it just dies the next day and all i have in the tank are datnoids
What is your Ph and are you buying them at an LFS or shipments? The only thing I can think of is maybe PH shock.
how do you acclimate??
they're sensitive to sudden changes.
Keep all the water in the plastic bag, put water and fish in a bucket with an airstone.
Every 25 minutes add a 6 oz. or so of water from your tank to the bucket. Do this for at least 2 hrs AND you have doubled the amount of water you started with. Net out fish and put in tank. Dump bucket water.
I do this for all my fish and even works for Discuses I have shipped to me.
they're sensitive to sudden changes.
Keep all the water in the plastic bag, put water and fish in a bucket with an airstone.
Every 25 minutes add a 6 oz. or so of water from your tank to the bucket. Do this for at least 2 hrs AND you have doubled the amount of water you started with. Net out fish and put in tank. Dump bucket water.
I do this for all my fish and even works for Discuses I have shipped to me.
nope i saw the previous thread it was some salt i added to the tank. i change the water and now the clown loach is thriving
Things you need to take into consideration when buying clown loaches;
a. Clown loaches are very prone to whitespot, they have little immunity against the parasite and many new clown loaches that arrive in lfs/local fish stores will get whitespot sooner or later.
For this reason, you should always quarentine new clown loaches because whitespot is a very infectious parasite and takes a while to treat, you really don't want it in your community tank, so quarentining the clown loaches is very adviseable.
Fish can carry whitespot for up to 2 weeks before showing the classic external white spot symptoms, so even if your loaches appear to be externally physically free of any nasty diseases or parasites, you should still quarentine your new loaches for at least 2 weeks to be on the safe side.
If your loaches do happen to get whitespot during the quarentine period, do NOT use salt, it is very harmful to fish like clown loaches as it causes them a lot of osmotic stress, and since they are not the hardiest of fish to begin with, treating new clown loaches for whitespot with salt can easily finish them off.
Here is the loaches.com advised methods of treating clown loaches for whitespot;
http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=2599
When you treat any fish for whitespot, you should treat it for at least 2 weeks (or depending on what the info on the whitespot med bottle says) and not buy any new fish for a further two weeks after that, since whitespot if not completely eradicated from the aquarium can come back, and new fish which are stressed are particularly vunerable to this parasite.
Your quarentine tank should be cycled before you put any new fish in it, as it would not be good to introduce new fish to an un-cycled tank, so you need to go about establishing some beneficial bacteria in the tanks filter before you introduce any fish to the quarentine tank.
Running the quarentine tank filter in one of your main tanks for a week will cycle it very quickly if your main tanks are already established, after that all you need to do is move the quarentine filter over to the quarentine tank at the same time you introduce the clown loaches.
The bigger the quarentine tank the better, the minimum size you go for depends on what size fish you want to quarentine and how many. If all you are quarentining is no more than 5 small clown loaches (i.e. 2inches or less), then a 5gallon will surfice, how if you want to quarentine more or larger fish, then it would be better to go for something larger.
Quarentine tanks can be overstocked a bit since the fish are only temporary, however that doesn't mean you should go crazy- fish can get stressed from overstocked in quarentine tanks as easily as any other tank, you should also have some strong/good filtration in the tank as well.
b. The second main factor to take into consideration is acclimatisation. You should try to make the journey from the lfs to your tank as quick as posible, and avoid placing the fish in their bag on their journey anywhere in your vehicle that is very hot, cold or suffers a lot of vibrations etc. Wrapping their transport bag in some newspaper or a towel will help prevent their bag cooling down rapidly during the journey, while putting their bag in a cardboard box will help prevent their bag moving around lots on fishes journey.
If you happen to be buying many fish from your lfs, ask the staff not to put too many fish in each bag.
The standard form of acclimatising the fish to a tank is to leave them floating in their bag in the tank water for around 30mins or more, slowly letting in small quantities of tank water into their bag every 5mins or so. If the fish have beeen on a long journey though (2hrs or more) or the ph or temp of the petshop tanks is different to yours, you should quarentine the fish in the tank for up to even an hour.
When the fish are finished acclimatising, turn off the tank lights for the day to help reduce the stress levels of the new fish. If you already have fish in the tank, feeding them while the new fish are settling in can be a good way to distract your current fish from the new ones and allow the new ones to settle into the tank in more peace.
Many clown loaches are not very well fed at petshops, so over the following couple of weeks you should concentrate on feeding them a very nutritious and varied diet (don't over-feed them though, and don't feed too many dried foods as these can be difficult for fish to digest and end up giving the fish constipation)- frozen or live foods are the best, particularly ones like daphinia, krill, bloodworms, artemecia etc. However feeding the loaches on their first day in the tank is not that nesarsary, its best to just let them settle in on the first day before starting them on a new diet etc.
(I will continue in just a moment)
a. Clown loaches are very prone to whitespot, they have little immunity against the parasite and many new clown loaches that arrive in lfs/local fish stores will get whitespot sooner or later.
For this reason, you should always quarentine new clown loaches because whitespot is a very infectious parasite and takes a while to treat, you really don't want it in your community tank, so quarentining the clown loaches is very adviseable.
Fish can carry whitespot for up to 2 weeks before showing the classic external white spot symptoms, so even if your loaches appear to be externally physically free of any nasty diseases or parasites, you should still quarentine your new loaches for at least 2 weeks to be on the safe side.
If your loaches do happen to get whitespot during the quarentine period, do NOT use salt, it is very harmful to fish like clown loaches as it causes them a lot of osmotic stress, and since they are not the hardiest of fish to begin with, treating new clown loaches for whitespot with salt can easily finish them off.
Here is the loaches.com advised methods of treating clown loaches for whitespot;
http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=2599
When you treat any fish for whitespot, you should treat it for at least 2 weeks (or depending on what the info on the whitespot med bottle says) and not buy any new fish for a further two weeks after that, since whitespot if not completely eradicated from the aquarium can come back, and new fish which are stressed are particularly vunerable to this parasite.
Your quarentine tank should be cycled before you put any new fish in it, as it would not be good to introduce new fish to an un-cycled tank, so you need to go about establishing some beneficial bacteria in the tanks filter before you introduce any fish to the quarentine tank.
Running the quarentine tank filter in one of your main tanks for a week will cycle it very quickly if your main tanks are already established, after that all you need to do is move the quarentine filter over to the quarentine tank at the same time you introduce the clown loaches.
The bigger the quarentine tank the better, the minimum size you go for depends on what size fish you want to quarentine and how many. If all you are quarentining is no more than 5 small clown loaches (i.e. 2inches or less), then a 5gallon will surfice, how if you want to quarentine more or larger fish, then it would be better to go for something larger.
Quarentine tanks can be overstocked a bit since the fish are only temporary, however that doesn't mean you should go crazy- fish can get stressed from overstocked in quarentine tanks as easily as any other tank, you should also have some strong/good filtration in the tank as well.
b. The second main factor to take into consideration is acclimatisation. You should try to make the journey from the lfs to your tank as quick as posible, and avoid placing the fish in their bag on their journey anywhere in your vehicle that is very hot, cold or suffers a lot of vibrations etc. Wrapping their transport bag in some newspaper or a towel will help prevent their bag cooling down rapidly during the journey, while putting their bag in a cardboard box will help prevent their bag moving around lots on fishes journey.
If you happen to be buying many fish from your lfs, ask the staff not to put too many fish in each bag.
The standard form of acclimatising the fish to a tank is to leave them floating in their bag in the tank water for around 30mins or more, slowly letting in small quantities of tank water into their bag every 5mins or so. If the fish have beeen on a long journey though (2hrs or more) or the ph or temp of the petshop tanks is different to yours, you should quarentine the fish in the tank for up to even an hour.
When the fish are finished acclimatising, turn off the tank lights for the day to help reduce the stress levels of the new fish. If you already have fish in the tank, feeding them while the new fish are settling in can be a good way to distract your current fish from the new ones and allow the new ones to settle into the tank in more peace.
Many clown loaches are not very well fed at petshops, so over the following couple of weeks you should concentrate on feeding them a very nutritious and varied diet (don't over-feed them though, and don't feed too many dried foods as these can be difficult for fish to digest and end up giving the fish constipation)- frozen or live foods are the best, particularly ones like daphinia, krill, bloodworms, artemecia etc. However feeding the loaches on their first day in the tank is not that nesarsary, its best to just let them settle in on the first day before starting them on a new diet etc.
(I will continue in just a moment)
Things to take into consideration though before you even get clown loaches though, to make sure your tank is even suitable for them at all would be;
a. How established is your tank? Clown loaches do not make good fish for new, particularly cycling tanks. Exposure to unstable water quality conditions or toxins like ammonia and nitrites (which will be present in the tank in its early stages as the nitrifying bacteria in the tanks filter is establishing itself) can have a very bad effect on the loaches health, even lethal.
b. Is my substrate suitable for clown loaches? Clown loaches feed with their barbels/whiskers, which are a very sensitive part of their mouth which they use to locate food they find inthe substrate.
Barbels/whiskers can be easily damaged though on clown loaches, and so a soft/fine sand substrate or very small rounded gravel substrate are the most ideal.
Rough gravel can damage the barbels of clown loaches and lead to bacterial or fungal infections in the fishes mouth, which if left untreated, will eat away at the fishes barbels and mouth and eventually kill the fish.
Needless to say, your substrate should be kept as clean as posible, ideally cleaning it at least once a week- sand is easier to keep clean than gravel, since it doesn't trap waste in it as easily as it does with gravel.
c. Are my other fish suitable as tankmates for clown loaches? Clown loaches do best in peaceful tanks with tank mates which are not agressive or territorial, clown loaches often have no concept of territory (and so will often bumble into other fishes territories unknowingly and upset the fish), and have no real physical defence against agressive fish. Clown loaches do fine with both very active fish and ones which are hardly active at all, the main thing is to avoid agressive/territorial fish tankmates for clown loaches.
d. Is my tank going to be big enough for these fish in the long term? Although clown loaches grow very slowly, they do have the ability to grow to 12inches+. I would say that a 5ft long by 18inch wide tank would be a good minimum tank size for 3-5clown loaches, although of course, the bigger the better.
e. Does my tank have suitabel decor for clown loaches? Clown loaches do best in tanks which have a fair amount of "hiding" places, decor like caves, pipes, planting, stable piles of driftwood or rocks etc all make good hiding places for clown loaches.
It is very important to provide hiding places for clown loaches, since they do not like to be forced to swim in open spaces all the time.
And i repeat again, do NOT use salt with clown loaches
.
If you follow these steps, you should be able to successfully keep them and they will thrive and survive in your tank in the long term. Clown loaches do best in groups of at least 3-5 or more.
Concerning clown loach diet, they are omnivores so a bit of everything is best- a lot of people neglect the veg aspect of their diet, although this is an easy part to fill, foods like algae wafers, blanched and chopped up spinache, heart of cucumber etc can all be fed to clown loaches to make sure they get enough veg in their diet.
When you buy clown loaches, avoid ones which have a skinny or sunken looking belly, as this is almost always a sure sign of internal parasites or internal bacteria, both or which can be difficult to treat. Make sure the loaches in the shop have vibrant colours (not faded) and no dodgey looking symptoms, make sure the barbels/whiskers on the loaches mouth are not eroded-looking and are all there in good condition etc
.
edit: Oh, and temp-wise, 24-29 degree's is a very good temp to keep clown loaches in- they can handle colder or hotter temps, but these are not that ideal for clown loaches in the long term.
a. How established is your tank? Clown loaches do not make good fish for new, particularly cycling tanks. Exposure to unstable water quality conditions or toxins like ammonia and nitrites (which will be present in the tank in its early stages as the nitrifying bacteria in the tanks filter is establishing itself) can have a very bad effect on the loaches health, even lethal.
b. Is my substrate suitable for clown loaches? Clown loaches feed with their barbels/whiskers, which are a very sensitive part of their mouth which they use to locate food they find inthe substrate.
Barbels/whiskers can be easily damaged though on clown loaches, and so a soft/fine sand substrate or very small rounded gravel substrate are the most ideal.
Rough gravel can damage the barbels of clown loaches and lead to bacterial or fungal infections in the fishes mouth, which if left untreated, will eat away at the fishes barbels and mouth and eventually kill the fish.
Needless to say, your substrate should be kept as clean as posible, ideally cleaning it at least once a week- sand is easier to keep clean than gravel, since it doesn't trap waste in it as easily as it does with gravel.
c. Are my other fish suitable as tankmates for clown loaches? Clown loaches do best in peaceful tanks with tank mates which are not agressive or territorial, clown loaches often have no concept of territory (and so will often bumble into other fishes territories unknowingly and upset the fish), and have no real physical defence against agressive fish. Clown loaches do fine with both very active fish and ones which are hardly active at all, the main thing is to avoid agressive/territorial fish tankmates for clown loaches.
d. Is my tank going to be big enough for these fish in the long term? Although clown loaches grow very slowly, they do have the ability to grow to 12inches+. I would say that a 5ft long by 18inch wide tank would be a good minimum tank size for 3-5clown loaches, although of course, the bigger the better.
e. Does my tank have suitabel decor for clown loaches? Clown loaches do best in tanks which have a fair amount of "hiding" places, decor like caves, pipes, planting, stable piles of driftwood or rocks etc all make good hiding places for clown loaches.
It is very important to provide hiding places for clown loaches, since they do not like to be forced to swim in open spaces all the time.
And i repeat again, do NOT use salt with clown loaches
. If you follow these steps, you should be able to successfully keep them and they will thrive and survive in your tank in the long term. Clown loaches do best in groups of at least 3-5 or more.
Concerning clown loach diet, they are omnivores so a bit of everything is best- a lot of people neglect the veg aspect of their diet, although this is an easy part to fill, foods like algae wafers, blanched and chopped up spinache, heart of cucumber etc can all be fed to clown loaches to make sure they get enough veg in their diet.
When you buy clown loaches, avoid ones which have a skinny or sunken looking belly, as this is almost always a sure sign of internal parasites or internal bacteria, both or which can be difficult to treat. Make sure the loaches in the shop have vibrant colours (not faded) and no dodgey looking symptoms, make sure the barbels/whiskers on the loaches mouth are not eroded-looking and are all there in good condition etc
.edit: Oh, and temp-wise, 24-29 degree's is a very good temp to keep clown loaches in- they can handle colder or hotter temps, but these are not that ideal for clown loaches in the long term.