Sudden death of a very healthy clown loach :/

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sunnysjourney

sunnysjourney

Aimara
MFK Member
Apr 20, 2014
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Hey guys, I've had a pack of 7 loaches for almost a year now. Got them all around 2-3" and now they are about 5-6", healthy and fat. I do a WC of about 50-60% every Saturday so the water quality is always pristine (0 ammonia 0 nitrate and <15 nitrate). I did a WC today and I noticed a loach acting weird. I thought nothing of it because that's how they have acted every time I do a water change. (The tank temperature goes from 82 to 77). A few hours later I come back to find the loach dead. I'm bummed. And the only thing I can think of that could have gone wrong is the sudden fluctuation in water temperature. But the thing that perplexes me is that I haven't had this problem of a loach dying till now. What do you guys think the reason of my year old fat fit and healthy loach dying?

My setup is a 240 gallon and the residents are:
- 6 clowns (was 7 till a couple of hrs ago)
- 2 NTT datnoids, 1 silver datnoid and 1 NGT datnoid
- 12 silver dollars
- 3 angles
- 2 discus
- 2 plecos
- 3 geos
- 1 flag tail

And I've had them all for over a year except the discus and geos.
 
Are you in a northern state? The reason I ask is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear of a sudden death like this is gas embolism. I don`t know the details of it but know it happens spring and fall and has to do with the temp of the ground and the water picking up gases that cause embolisms in fishes gills, resulting in death. Other than that I just can`t imagine what happened but I am sorry about the lose of the fish.
 
Belly up said:
Are you in a northern state? The reason I ask is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear of a sudden death like this is gas embolism. I don`t know the details of it but know it happens spring and fall and has to do with the temp of the ground and the water picking up gases that cause embolisms in fishes gills, resulting in death. Other than that I just can`t imagine what happened but I am sorry about the lose of the fish.
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Than you. And Gas embolism huh? I gotta read a little more into this issue. But I'm from nor cal so I guess you could consider it more northern than other parts of the U.S. We have been having some serious drought for the last few years and our water reserves are pretty low now. So it is possible that there are some harmful gasses in the water (our tap water comes from deep water wells).
 
It was just a suggestion. I have my own well which is pretty deep by Michigan standards, 475 feet. The water line, which is more important, is sixty feet from well head to house. That is where the gassing occurs, as far as I know.

I have never lost a fish that way, but do notice some cloudiness to the water at certain times of the year. I`m not sure if it occurs because of the frost entering/leaving the ground or what. When I see it I make sure to agitate the water as much possible while refilling my tanks. Treating it like it has chlorine in it would be better.
 
Belly up said:
It was just a suggestion. I have my own well which is pretty deep by Michigan standards, 475 feet. The water line, which is more important, is sixty feet from well head to house. That is where the gassing occurs, as far as I know.

I have never lost a fish that way, but do notice some cloudiness to the water at certain times of the year. I`m not sure if it occurs because of the frost entering/leaving the ground or what. When I see it I make sure to agitate the water as much possible while refilling my tanks. Treating it like it has chlorine in it would be better.
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I did some research after you suggested the gas embolism and I found out that a lot of fish keepers in my area are having similar problems which leads me to think that our tap water is not all that good for aquariums now. I guess Ill start doing less frequent water changes till our drought condition gets better :/.
 
Sorry to hear about your loss! It's really hard when you've had them a long time and raised them to a good size to have them not make it suddenly. I don't know what kind of filtration you have on your system. You could consider doing a refugium in a sump or getting an RO/DI system. That amount of temperature variation is small. I doubt that was the cause.
 
I have pretty bad tap water quality as well down in Austin, Tx in the suburbs... I occasionally would find high levels of ammonia when taking periodic samples before I set up my tank. I pretty much gave up on tap water after it seemed to be randomly showing up in the tap and went full RO and do a 30% change every two weeks on a 90g with 18 loaches and a couple cichlids.

I'm setting up a 240g right now, just waiting on my 3d background to show up before filling it up. At that point, I will have to start using some tap water as well or pony up and get a higher output RO unit.

My current plan is to use a 40g tank I picked on CL to fill up with my desired W/C amount (mix of LFS RO and tap water) and let it run overnight through at cycled hang on the tank filter + a powerhead before doing the water change the next day in-case I have any abnormal levels of ammonia present.

Maybe consider a small tank or barrel that you fill up and put a powerhead in there to outgas the water overnight in the future, if that is the real issue causing the loss. Maybe check your tap water randomly a few times to see if anything is out of whack in terms of Ammonia / Nitrites / PH. Do you have a water softner? Have heard of people replacing their salt and not waiting for enough cycles before using the water in their tanks...

I have never lost a loach, other than one when he somehow jumped out the back of the tank and cleared the stand-top... took my about a month before I found him after noticing that I was missing one... For the longest time I just thought 1 had found a really good hiding spot.

Clown Loaches are pretty hardy from my experience as long as you maintain your water quality and feed them, as I have picked some up as LFS returns that looked really, really bad from either: being essentially starved or kept by themselves and they have all bounced back. I would say once you are larger than 3"... something pretty dramatic has to occur or its likely just natural causes.

Oh and as far as temps, I really doubt that was the issue... think about rivers where they come from, you will have diff temp zones depending on flow-rate and water depth. I would stick with looking for PH crash or splke and/or Ammonia or an out-gassing issue.
 
Stang725 you get ammonia in your tap water because it's treated with chloramine. Sunny it sounds like your fish died from osmotic shock from a swing in TDS.
 
Thank you for your comments and suggestions guys.

evabug, my filtration consists of bio balls, pads and an ehiem professional 3 canister filter so I think I'm good on the filtration part. I do have an RO/DI system that I used to use on my reef but haven't used it lately, mainly due to the severity of the drought we have here in cali (RO wastes a lot of water). And a 50% WC on a 240 is a lot of RO water to use every week in our current condition.

Stang, yes, I started using an old plastic 100g barrel now. I filled it up on saturday and added some Indian almond leaves in it. Hopefully it will help.

Slayer, what do you mean by TDS?

Ultimatejay, it definitely was some sort of internal organ failure, I was wondering what might have caused it. But I doubt that its some sort of parasite because I haven't added any new fish in a while.
 
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