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Most of my clown loaches seem to have black splotches on their bodies. These are not clown markings. The black stripes appear discoloured in the area of the splotches and the splotches are a dark grey to black colour on the yellow sections.

All clowns are doing fine, except one, who is getting more and more sluggish and developing a cloudy eye. The same thing happened to another clown in the past and he died.

I have had splotches in the tank before, but they have disappeared on their own. This time though, the splotches are back with a vengeance, what can I do

I have noticed this on occasion with my group of 8 ,it comes and goes, and i can only put it down to nitrate rises when im lazy and dont do water changes every week like i normally do.



Gibson SG you know you want one!!

Sounds like peripheral fungal or saprolegnia infections,on the eye, I think what your seeing is the skin mucous reacting to the presence of the usual bacteria and fungi that often cause finrot.

See if your lfs has any meds rated safe for use with scaleless fish that will tackle fungus and finrot, and as krige indicates, keep up with gravel cleaning and water changes.

Should any white cysts appear on the body or gills get back to us straight away.Henneguya is a possibility, and as far as infections go, its hell on wheels.

Can you post a piccy?

The pics are uploaded here. Let me know what you think it is:

http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d152/clownygirl/clowns%20with%20black%20spots/

I have to admit, that I had become lazy about water changes in between, and to add to that, they are fixing some pipes in the city, so the water is really muddy.

Hello Clowny

At guess I would think it could be stress related. Caused by the poor quality water. If it was me I would do several water changes at least twice a week for several weeks and each time add a good live bacteria if you can get it if not Sera make a good product called Nitrivec "Bio Cultures" I always add 10ml at every water change and 20ml at every mothly filter cleaning for the large tank. I wuld also consider using Melafix. Also greatly reduce the lighting as much as possible.
Let me know what you think about these ideas

All the best Keith

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Having looked as thoroughly as I can at the pictures you sent me im pretty sure that the fish are showing all the symptoms a Cytophaga infection.

The bodily discolouring , erosion, fin damage, misty eyes etc is not just a water quality problem, although this infection is encouraged by less than perfect conditions.Contagiousness is highly variable, as are morbidity rates, so how long fish last with the infection and how many cagemates might also be infected cannot be known.

This group of flexibacteria are commonly know for causing finrot, although by no means are their activities confined to the fins and the caudal peduncle.Your fish are also showing signs of septacaemia in the veins on the caudal peduncle , and this is fairly typical of Cytophaga infections, even in the absence of outright necrosis.

The black patches on your fish are too large to be the "blackspot disease" known as henneguya thankfully, but are a serious sign of general metabolic distress. Its not uncommon for clown loaches to show such colouration when attacked by virtually any bacterial, fungal or parasitic ailment, or indeed shockingly bad water quality. The misting however is a good indication of present disease.


Many subspecies will affect the entire skin tissue including the eyes, and will cause greying in the skin slime layers. Death may occur far in advance of fins being completely lost in a number of resilient species, clown loaches included.

Given that this seems to be a most serious strain, it would be prudent to go for the one treatment that really kills all of the strains- Furan 2 . Furan 3 should also work as oxytetracycline will kill most strains also. Both treatments will likely annihilate the filter bacteria though. Powdered oxytetracycline can also be ingested with feeds, and if you can get them to ingest it, your odds of recovery will be much better than if they simply swim about in it.

I have to admit though, that im not a big fan of oxytetracycline, it can be a little unpredictable as a med and often gets variable results, but with clowns, its a question of what you can use that wont actually kill them.

Furan brand meds are powerful, and not completely guaranteed not to kill clown loaches, but many, many , people have had success using half doses, and courses of normal duration, usually 7 days. Treat the badly infected individuals preferably in quarantine.Avoid any treatments than include methyl blue, malachite green, and copper.

For the tank itself, you should steralise it of this bacteria with heavy doses of melafix to kill much of the ambient harmful bacteria, and you can try low doses of sulfermerazine, available in triple sulfa meds.The bacteria undergoes major reproduction in average aquarium temperatures every three days, so make sure you are using bactericides at least that often to control its spread. Its recommended that tank temperatures are increased for a week to increase fish metabolism, this disease prefers stable temperatures and is often badly affected by temperature hikes, but be careful not to shock the fish with sudden temperature increases. A 5 degrees farenheit increase should be enough to really annoy this bacteria, and with meds help speed it on to extinction.


Thats really the best I can do on a solution that will cure the clowns with low mortality, while trying to take it easy on the tank and not force it into a re-cycle.

Clowns are always a complete bugger to treat.

Hope it goes well for you. ps empty your inbox, I cant reply to the pm.

I have tried Furan in the past and my fish seem to die whenever I have used it, even at half dose. On the other hand, it may just be a case of the fish being so sick, it was going to die anyway.

The lights are out in the tank, I cannot do water changes because of the tap water quality, the last change was 7 days ago, I will have to hold off until this weekend, and then see how I can do the water change

Somehow, I suspect, it could be the water coming out of the tap that has caused it, but I am not very sure. I get Sera in the city so I am going to see if they have that particular med that Keith suggested. May be, I should consider a small 10% change, but my husband is dead against it given what's coming out of the tap these days.

I have to check that pack of Furan to see if it's 2 or 3 and if has not expired yet.

Update: Got me some test kits and here are the readings:

PH: 4.5 in clown tank, 6.5 in mbuna tank, 7 in bucket of water sitting around for 4 days ready for water change.

NO2: 0.1

Ammonia: 0.1

After 20% water change with water sitting for 4 days, PH came up to 5.5 in the clown tank.

Could this be causing the problem?

I have also been using Rid all Anti Ich (it works for fungal infections as well) to take care of the torn diminishing fins and it seems to have helped with the fins and misty eyes. Should I continue with it.

I have a lot of wood in this tank, could that be the cause of really low PH, by a lot of wood, I mean a lot of wood.

More edit: Tested after 1 hour of water change, PH is up to 6. How is it possible for the ph to go up like this?

Its possible that post the use of meds the water quality issues will also be causing skin slime layer and pigment cell discolouration.

Any fish outside of its tolerable ranges may experience this.Correct the conditions and you'll soon see if the fish pick up or not.

As for how its possible, you simply changed the chemistry by changing the water and removing some of the causitve agents, but youll soon see in the coming days if things go back to the way they were. Keep monitoring.

After each water change, the ph increases to 5.5 but falls to 5 by the next day in the afternoon. The daily water changes seem to be doing the fish some good. I stopped adding the meds but the problems with the ph continue. The new wood added to the tank is not a problem because I tested it in a bucket of water and the ph in the bucket was ok.

I got a new more powerful filter 2000 L/Hr for the 79 gallon tank and added ceramic rings to half of the filter. Will this help in bringing the ph up?

The ph has fallen to 4.5
The clowns are in distress. Are Daily water changes harmful?

I would suggest seeing if your local LFS has a way of treating the water, if they are in the same area they must be doing something so they can do WC, I would suggest going to them and seeing if you can get water from them. I know alot of LFS around me use RO water which is a filtered water from a Reverse Osmosis Membrane

Thanks for your input as always, Shane
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ClownyGirl

I have just sent you a E/m re the Ph.
Yesterday I went to a LFS in our area and they often have a drastic changes in their Phs just after they have done water top ups. On checking it is always an imported bacteria problem.

Have you done a bacteria test?? .
If it is coming through the water the changes are only making it far worse.
Get some live bacteria ( several brands) and follow the instructions very carefully. Can you adjust the PH as well? This is the way I solved my problem and the reason I add the good bacteria at every water change.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

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Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

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I have removed all articles from the tank, gravel, pebbles, filter, wood and tested them in water in isolation and the PH always showed up between 6.5 to 7 but the ph of the tank itself keeps dropping to 4.5. After a water change it will go up to 5.5 and then goes back to 4.5 in less than 24 hours.

We do have a slight algae problem, I am going out to try and get some nitrifying bacteria and antibiotics. I have no idea what could be wrong any more.

The same water source is used for the mbuna tank which is at 6.5 and above and completely stable without doing anything.

After yesterdays water change (15%) the ph today has again gone down to 4.5

The daily water changes do not seem to be helping in lowering the ph.
Would it help if I did a 50% water change?

What if I remove the clowns from this tank and put them into the other tank that has a ph of 6.5?

Will this move, stress the clowns...more than their current situation...?
The move would result in a immediate increase in ph from 4.5 to 6.5

Please advice

I would not do that. Moving them from ph 4.5 to 6.5 is a change of 100 times in acidity!

Water change will only raise the ph temporarily, but it will not solve the problem of your low ph. You have to find out what's causing the low ph in your tank and remove it from the equation.

One possibilty could the the "Old Tank Syndrome" http://www.bestfish.com/oldtank.html

Good luck with your clowns.

A strong pungent smell has been coming from this tank for a while now. The other tank does not smell/stink like this tank. This has been present for over 3 months despite frequent water changes.

I wish you had said that ages ago.

Pull the whole tank down save all the water and keep the filter going in the saved water. Buy a good recycle or Sera Nitrivec.

Does it smell like rotten eggs if so it is sulphur di oxide the substrate or something else is DEAD in the tank.

I personally would buy all new substrate and either a larger tank with a very good large external filter upgrade the filter and replace the substrate immediately.

Scrub all the DW and every thing else in the tank

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos


Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
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I got myself a kH test kit. The kH for both the tanks (clown and cichlid) is 3dKH. I used a Sera kH test kit, the instructions were not very clear but I think I got the readings right.

Can't tear the tank down as I an about to go away for a 5 day holiday and it is really not possible to have any dead fish in there that do not know of. The tank is relatively easy to clean and maintain. Weekly water changes are done and gravel vac is a standard practice. The smell is like vinegar…I think.

The ph of the clown tank is again 4.5
The ph of the cichlid tank is 6.5.

Same water source....??? this is driving me crazy.

Is there something I need to do since I am going for a 5 day holiday...

Updated pics of tank and one affected clown:

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d152/clownygirl/clowns%20with%20black%20spots/DSCF2962.jpg

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d152/clownygirl/clowns%20with%20black%20spots/DSCF2833.jpg

Looks like that clown now has bacterial septacaemia. I should also ask, what is that filter? The media might need a quick wash if a big external is attached to that, or maybe the mulm reserviour is full. Do you also get right into the gravel when you clean it, with a gravel vac, and dump the water etc.I assume the rocks are slate, but what is the cave made from?

Yes, I know these are probably dumb questions . Indulge me.