Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => The Emergency Room => Topic started by: chris213 on May 05, 2014, 03:24:31 PM
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as posted in another topic on the forum i have had a problem today with my new clown loaches becomeing traped in a decoration , sadly this has resulted in the death of one of them but after 10 mins of franticaly trying to free the second one eventualy being succseful it has resulted in the fin on tof of his body been tore off , it dosent seem to be affecting him as he is happily swimming around the tank without any difficulties , i was just wondering if there was anything i could do to help him ( i do hav shrimp in the same tank )
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Initially, the best thing is to make sure the water is super sparkly clean. This does mean a few extra water changes. This is usually enough for the fish to heal.
If it does get infected though you'll need to medicate. Do you have anywhere to move the loach to for the duration? You can steal some media from the main tank to run in a hospital thank. You wouldn't need much for one fish. I would be inclined to throw it away afterwards in case any trace of them med left in it killed the shrimps if you put it back.
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i just tested all my water ammonia 0 ppm nitrite 0 ppm nitrates at 20 ppm ( tap water is arooud about 10 ppm )
but there is alot of alge floating around that was on all the plants from the fishless cycle am i best to do a water change then to help keep everything clean for the loach?
i do have the 60 liter tank i bought of ebay but no filter yet and its not set up but if needed i could get it up and running fairly quickly
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It's making sure there's no muck sitting on the bottom that's the most important thing, especially with fish like loaches which live on the bottom. Bugs getting into the damaged areas is the problem, keeping the bottom nice and clean is the best way to achieve that.
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ok will have a good vacum around in the tank bottom shortly and see how everything goes.thank sue for all your help :)
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sad to report that the clown loach passed away in the night , everything seemed so fine when turned the lights and air pump of for bed then woke this morning to find he has passed away sometime during the night :(. The 3rd and final loach seems to be ok swimming around like a fish on drugs althow he does seem to look for his mates sometimes , i do intend to replace the two deceased loach's but was just curious would the 3rd loach be ok on his own till the weekend i dont want to cause him any stress by being on his own and if thats the case i can try and get out on my lunch break from work
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It would be better to get more sooner, but the last one should be OK on its own till the weekend. Keep an eye out for whitespot as clown loaches are very prone to it when stressed.
And you'll need at least half a dozen of them eventually as they are very social fish.
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i checked both the dead ones for white spot and all looked ok i will keep a very close eye on the 3rd one to see how he is getting on, i might try and go out sometime in the week on my lunch break and get him a few companions to be with( sorry boss my fish was ill seems a valid excuse to me ).yes my eventual plan was to have 3 last weekend and to keep my eye out on my ammonia levels etc then in one or two weeks time if all was ok with the levels to get another 3 as i didn't want to put to much of a strain on my bio load in one week.