New Clown Loaches Help with Medication treatment plan

excaliber

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OK I've been reading this section for over two hours trying to figure out what we need to do with our new Clown Loaches.
We have 6 new ones that are 1.5-2" long. They all look healthy and were all eating well after getting used to their new 20 gal quarantine tank.
I'm confused on what we need to buy if anything.

From what I've gathered we need to treat first with Plazipro after a max water change.
Then treat with Metronidazole or metro soaked food
or use Levamisole

Here's what we have on hand
Plazipro & Seachem Paraguard

Do we need anything else like Seachem Metroplex too?

Is there a recommended treatment plan listed here for medication type(s) and duration?

Right now we are keeping them at 81 degrees for a couple days.

If anyone has some recommendations on the best plan going forward please let me know
 

kno4te

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If they aren’t displaying any symptoms of being then no need to treat. Monitor and let them eat in the meantime. Are the clown loaches sick?
 

Coryloach

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Many don't treat fish as a preventative. It depends on which "many" you decide to side with. From personal experience,

Fish should only be treated if there is a reason for it. The medications you have on hand have limited action.

Paraguard can be harmful to clown loaches. It treats external parasites which you'd know about if fish had them.

Prazi treats tape worms only so it is somewhat limited.

So either way it is best to wait. Your fish more than likely do not need to be treated at all. I know I didn't treat mine if that helps.

If you see any emaciation, or flicking, rubbing, white spots, etc..then evaluate again but what they might have, may not be covered by the meds you have, so preventative treatment only works to stress the fish as it is like shooting in the dark.
 
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kno4te

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I've not seen any symptoms yet. I was just wondering about treating them for parasites etc. before they do show symptoms. It seems many people do this as a preventative measure.
Gotcha. Lot of loaches are cb nowadays. Not wild. A good quarantine process is needed. Wouldn’t pretreat. Just watch. If something comes up then that’s a different story.
 
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excaliber

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I'll watch them and go from there. Hopefully they don't develop anything get we need to treat for. I'll ask if these are wild caught which I'm pretty sure they are.

I'll report back for some help if there are any problems.
 
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kno4te

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I'll watch them and go from there. Hopefully they don't develop anything get we need to treat for. I'll ask if these are wild caught which I'm pretty sure they are.

I'll report back for some help if there are any problems.
At 1.5-2in I’d lean toward cb but gotta trust ur seller.
 

RD.

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Gotcha. Lot of loaches are cb nowadays. Not wild. A good quarantine process is needed. Wouldn’t pretreat. Just watch. If something comes up then that’s a different story.
I totally agree with the latter part of your comment, and totally disagree with the former. Other than the odd outlet that breeds clown loaches on a very limited basis, almost all clown loaches in the hobby are wild caught. Last export number that I read, was approx 50+ million being exported each year from Indonesia. In the off season many Indo suppliers raise larvae and tiny juvies to sellable size, such as what the OP purchased.


Either way, I would not treat with anything for the reasons mentioned previously. If you see any issues down the road, I would recommend feeding NLS Hex-Shield for several days. Good luck.
 
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RD.

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Just thought that I would add this from the export study sticky.

I am loggin in again in MFK using my colleague ID since RD, my friend, contacted me about this thread.

Well, as you may aware there are two types of Clown Loach in market right now. Borneo and Sumatra.

During its season, you can collect WC hundred thousands of CL in borneo. This making the production of induced breeding clown loach is not profitable considering high cost of induced breeding production. Producing and raising them into saleable size very costly. During the wc collecting season, the sales price of CL is much lower than cost of producing the using induced breeding. So it wont be profitable. The only profitable way to sale CB CL is during the off season when the CL price hit the highest price. However, for big trader, where they have very proper facility, they prefer collect WC CL during the harvest season and sale some. So they will banking the CL stock and release some in the off season. That why CB CL in Indonesia is very small

Talking about the way of harvesting CL in Sumatra and borneo. In Sumatra the people is very skilled in collecting very tiny CL. It’ss like a rice-size and raise it in the pond. So, when Borneo in in the off season, they will release the CL to market. While in borneo, the people only harvest ¾ inch above. During the season of Borneo CL, trader prefer to buy borneo CL than Sumatra CL. Even one of big exporter in Sumatra also buy CL and Tiger fish from Borneo.

Yes, large CL is banned from export, but you can always find some exporters still ship some of large CLs to overseas. The ban is basically to protect source of CL parents in overseas which can be used for induced breeding.
 
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