Thought it was ich but they keep dying 😔

[G8zzaj]

Hey everyone,

ive got a colony of frontosa with a school of clown loaches and I add a vampire pleco 3 weeks ago and last week I noticed a bit of his tail looking raggedy and when I can down in the morning he was dead and the clowns had what I thought was ich (tons of flashing and lots of white spots).

I did a big water change and started treating with paraguard but after a week 12 of the 18 loaches are now dead. The last 3 I fished out had white film all over them so I don’t know what’s wrong??

the two biggest loaches seem unaffected and the frontosa seem fine too.

some pictures below of two of the loaches that are struggling now.

move stopped the paraguard and heat treatment as it didn’t seem to help and have moved to a low does of salt.

please let me know your thoughts as I’m getting desperate and don’t want to lose the last 6 of these guys

 

[Deadeye]

How fast are the fish breathing?
It’s possible what you are seeing is velvet rather than ich.
You can try treating with copper (coppersafe is going to be the best for scaleless fish), which is commonly used for marine velvet (amyloodinium) and should work on the freshwater velvet (oodinium) as well.

 

[G8zzaj]

The loaches are breathing super fast. Frontosa completely unphased

 

[Deadeye]

Being a scaleless fish, it makes sense that loaches will show symptoms first. I wouldn’t be surprised if the frontosas begin to act up soon.

 

[LukeOscar]

i couldnt tell you if its ich or velvet. but i can tell you from keeping various fish for 15 years. i have never had a med work on ich. my ich treatment is increasing temps. adding more surface agitation and adding methylene blue. this technique is usually 100% successful if caught early enough.

 

[neutrino]

Ich can kill fish and my recollection is loaches are more susceptible than some other fish, though it's been 30 years since I kept them.

Long story short, the last time I dealt with ich was 10 years ago after a big storm knocked out power for 9 days. I was doing daily water changes with river water and something like a week after everything was up and running again I had ich all over the place-- seeing as it had probably been 20 years since my previous last case of ich, it must have come with the river water. (it's a myth that every tank has ich in it, just waiting for something to stress your fish; also, I've had plenty of outages, some for a few days and this was the only occurrence with ich) Among my fish at the time, geos had it the worst, angels and severums next, plecos not much and frontosa (technically, C. gibberosa kapampa) hardly at all-- I was breeding pyrocephalus (red head tapajos), had a lot of them, and to lessen the load in their tank I put some with the kapampa, so it's a direct comparison.

Coppersafe works well with ich ime and is what I used to clear it up 10 years ago, but whatever the meds you do have to catch it before it gets too advanced.

 

[duanes]

All treatments, be they copper, methylene, or salt work on the same principle.
They increase the osmotic pressure in the water beyond what emerging ick protozoa (or velvet, or Epistalis) can handle.
The biggest problem for aquarists is they under dose and the protozoa laugh it off.
It would be like taking a half a flu, or covid shot.
Some aquarists inadvertently under dose by using the volume method (tsps or tbps) per gal, using salt of different grain size, which doesn't provide the proper salinity (osmotic pressure) to kill emerging ick.
I use the weight method, 3 lbs salt per 100 gals, what ever salt grain size, 3 lbs is 3 lbs

The fish above arrived from shipping with ick
Below, after 3 lbs per 100 gals about a week to 10 days ib a 3ppt salinity is the result.

I assume you didn't QT the pleco, asked as a learning moment?

 

[G8zzaj]

This is the latest dead fish.

I half dosed salt yesterday and will half dose again today to get to a full dosage.

seems like I’m destined to lose all of the clown loaches.

no I didn’t QT the pleco, stupidly believed the petshop when they said he had been quarantined

 

[G8zzaj]

Here’s a better picture

 

[the_deeb]

It looks like epistylis to me. I sadly also lost a bunch of clown loaches to it last year when I misdiagnosed it as ich. I had been treating with coppersafe and Ich-X for over 2 weeks with no improvement before I concluded it wasn’t ich.

If it is epistylis, then an effective treatment is kanamycin in food. I used seachem kanaplex + focus, but unfortunately my loaches had already stopped eating by the time I figured it out. It worked and cleared it up for all the other fish in the tank though.