Hey everyone, I just wanted to stop by saying I’ve given myself enough of a hard time about this already so if you could be nice in the comments it would be appreciated.
I inherited a 180 L tank from my Mum that had two clown loaches in it. I already knew that this isn’t ideal and the plan was to add another load for their social structure and once they got too big upgrade them to a larger tank. The tank is fully cycled and nine days ago I wanted to add some more community fish. I realise no I should’ve done this in stages, but this wasn’t flagged at the store when I was asking questions.
I got four Molly’s, a clown loach juvenile, a dwarf gourami and six cherry barbs. The clown loach and 2 Dalmatian mollies died within the first 24-48 hours and I believe this is due to stress. Things were stable for the next few days. Then in the morning I noticed I’d lost a cherry Barb. They are congregating at the surface and at first I thought that was just where they wanted to hang out as I’d added some floating plants (3 frog bit).
When the next cherry Barb died on Saturday I realised something was wrong. My water tests were clean 0/0/20 and ph 7.4. Temp 27. I thought maybe it was an oxygen issue as I had adjusted the filters a bit to calm the surface for the floating plants. I did a water change with cooler water (25 degrees) at 40% with dechlorinator. At that point the smaller original clown loach had been gasping at the surface and going vertical in the corner. And then went to hide and I thought maybe I’d fix the oxygen issue.
But then in the evening last night I saw it on its side gasping at the bottom I did another 20% water change and move the filters higher so the water was even more agitated but unfortunately this morning it didn’t make it. My mum had had this fish for years and I’m so devastated. On top of that the larger loach is now in the corner by the filter gasping at the air and it looks like there’s a white flex on its tail. I also lost two more cherry barbs and I only have one left it has quite red gills and also looks like spots. I didn’t notice any white spots on the corpses but because I thought it was an oxygen issue I wasn’t looking the closest.
I’ve turned the temperature up in the tank around 29° and I’m undecided if I should go and get ich treatment or not. I know loaches are scaleless and can’t be really sensitive to these things. I’m so worried about it and I feel like such a bad fish keeper because I followed bad advice. If anyone has any experience with this or recommendations for what I should do to try and help my fish, I would really appreciate it thank you.
Posted by Jaggerous
3 Comments
Just to add some extra information: I have an air pump coming today as was planning to add it to improve oxygen. I’ve also planted the tank in a man Amazon sword, Anubia and Java ferns when I got the fish. And some Phoenix Moss on Thursday. The frog bit was melting so I removed it from the tank yesterday. I haven’t fed them since Saturday. Remaining loach was dancing and seemed in good health yesterday.
Please don’t beat yourself up, this “new fish wipeout” is a painful rite of passage that many hobbyist go through (store fish are often carriers), and your water parameters being perfect (0/0/20) confirms you didn’t fail on maintenance, you just got hit by a pathogen.
The red gills and gasping point strongly to Ich or Velvet attacking the gills before spots appeared, so I would treat the whole tank immediately with a Malachite Green/Formalin med like Ich-X (safer for loaches than copper) and crucially lower the temperature back to 26-27°C, because high heat right now is making it harder for him to breathe, so get that air stone in asap. You can also lower the water level an inch to create splashing (surface agitation = more oxygen).
Gold specs look like velvet!