Scared pale clown loaches

[Raven_]

Hello.
have 6 clown loaches which look abit pale and scared.

At wednesday(4 days ago) i cleaned out roughly 60% of the vegetation and as soon as i was finished the clown loaches was out looking for food.
Friday night i found the smallest of them ded, could not se anything wrong except it had been chewed on and the black was alittle to the greyish colour.
Since friday the clown loaches has been hiding and since saturday i have barely seen them.
Today(sunday) i saw one of them when i feed the fishes.

The black ghost i bought at friday is healthy and is at the moment swimming around looking for food even with the lights on, the 6 silversharks behaves roughly the same.
I can se now difference in behaviour or look on the scalare, synodontis eupterus or Crossocheilus oblongus.

The aquarium is a 540L(150*60*60cm), i have a fluval 403 external filter which also circulates water through a 25L watercontainer for improved biological filtration.

Did a 35% waterchange yeasterday and watertemperature is around 26celsius.
3 of the clown loaches was bought around januari/februari and the other 4 was bought around 4 months ago.

I added a Aquaclear 50 waterpump with a quickfilter to use as a mechanical filter at wednesday, can that be the reason of the behaviour change of the clown loaches ?

Can the Echinodorus bleheri i planted in the aquarium wednesday be the reason ?

Regards
Raven_

 

[ewurm]

You removed a bunch of plants and added a new one?

 

[Raven_]

More replanted then removed.
Have a bunch of Limnophila Heterophylla and they where around 80cm long, cut them down to 20cm and replanted them.
Something i have done several times before without any problems.

 

[ShadowBass]

What are your water parameters? The paleness could just be stress from everything being moved around, but the death of one of them is troubling.

 

[ewurm]

Loaches get stressed easily. If the smallest was less than two inches, I wouldn't worry too much. Small loaches are casualties often from internal parasites, and stress can kill them. I would observe the remaining, and see if they are breathing heavily. If so, you have a problem.

 

[toehead11183]

whenever io add new CLs to my tank, they turn pale. it usually takes mine a month or so to fully settle in.

 

[Raven_]

How sensitive are the loaches to vibrations and noise ?

Just found out that the Aquaclear 50 i put in last week makes alot of noise, loud enough for me to not want to have my ear onto the glass on the other side of the aquarium.

Have removed the pump to se if the behaviour changes.

What are your water parameters?

Temperature is 26c/79f.
No2 should be zero, have not done anything lately that can affect the biological filtration.
No3 varies between 0-15ppm.
Kh is ~3
Ph ~6.8-7

If the smallest was less than two inches

Was around 2 inches.

I would observe the remaining, and see if they are breathing heavily.

4 have been hiding today but 2 of them got out during feeding time.
No heavy breathing from what i have seen.

 

[aquatic_wonders]

Loaches get stressed easily. If the smallest was less than two inches, I wouldn't worry too much. Small loaches are casualties often from internal parasites, and stress can kill them. I would observe the remaining, and see if they are breathing heavily. If so, you have a problem.

I agree with this and one more I read on their website that everytime you change the way their place look's their going to adjust again even though it's thesame tank.

 

[Raven_]

An update, removed a piece of driftwood, the loaches kept hiding in a cavity and removed it so they would not get stuck and die, they have plenty of other spaces to hide in and will fill the cavity with aquariumgrade silicone before i put it in the tank again just incase.

The remaining 6 loaches still lives and they have started to come out and look for food but are still easily scared.
The darkcoloured areas, how dark should they be ?

 

[Raven_]

The loaches are out all the time now fighting playing looking for food or doing loops but acouple of them looks more grey than black.

The dark areas on 2 of the loaches are very dark and on one of the loaches its somewhat dark.
On the other 3 loaches the dark areas goes more into grey.

I first bought 3 loaches and a couple of months later added a couple of more loches.
Could it just be 2 different variations of the same specie ?