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I have just got two Clown Loach after seeing them at a very good price for their size. Only had them two days but worried that their not going to eat. Normal flake food is eaten much to fast by the other fish, so I put some cucumber in, they never touched it also tried banana just the same.
They are sat at the back of the tank.
Any ideas??

Might want to give more time, it was a week beofre my last new addition started eating, now shes a pig.

As with all animals - including humans - there is stress when moving home - they should soon settle if your conditions are right - then any fish will eat when he is hungry



Regards

Dave the rave

Thanks for your help...will let you know what happens

Give them a few more days...clowns get very stressed when moved or if anything is moved inside of their aquarium...they seem to sulk for a few days also i'd usually warn you about how easily they can get ich when you buy them from the store but if they are already pretty big then the chances are diminished a lot. They should be fine.

I agree with all the above give them more time. I would also suggest either blood worms or brine shrimp, to get them started.

Must agree here, give them time to relax and destress...also try some shrimp pellets, algae wafers, want some snails give them time and bottom feeder foods and they will do fine...



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I miss those times
I miss those nights
I even miss the silly fights
The making up
The morning talks
And those late afternoon walks
I miss my friend
The one my heart and soul confided in
The one I felt the safest with
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"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

mine took a week before it really started eating. for a while it was swimming upside down at the surface eating flakes. they also really like algae wafers, mine made a clicking noise when it ate those, i don't know why.

Last night while the light was on they were both laid down having a kip, when the light went off they both started swimming together, like two kids messing about it was lovely to see. Should I feed them at night or keep feeding during the day to coax them out?

I feed my fish 2 times, one in the morning, and one at night.

You can try dropping some sinking pellets in to watch them eat, but my clowns are always out (day and night) they acually sleep at night most of the time - it seems like.

BAD NEWS.. after watching the clown loach settle in, I have just got 2 silver shark I have always wanted some after a day in the tank I noticed that one had ich. The next day got some treatment, started adding it at the stated dose.five days later the silver shark are getting better but all other fish have it, I have never seen it spread so fast.I have always used this treatment and it's always worked well, but this alarms me that the others have got it, when the treatment should kill it in it's swimming stage.
I have added some salt tonight. Knowing clowns are sensitive to salt just two teaspoons. I have a forty gallon tank.
Does anyone have any other ideas??

Last edited by flash at 04-Jun-2005 16:37

The best you can do right now is to raise the temperture, and keep up with the salt, and water cahnges.

Two teaspoons of salt in a 40 gallon tank is basically useless, IMO. Take a look here:
http://www.loaches.com/salt.html

Note the temperature recommendation. The heat is as important as the salt for treating ick. CL's can withstand higher heat than this, no problem. Maintain treatment for the full time period advised, even though all spots have disappeared to eliminate remaining cysts that have dropped to the gravel and invisible freeswimming swarmer cells the cysts produce.

Make sure that when you are treating ich on loaches to make SURE that you follow the directions explicitly when dealing with scaleless fish, ESPECIALLY clown loaches because they are very sensitive to water chemistry. I am in no means accusing you of not doing so, I would just hate for you to make the same mistake I did. I was using a malichite green product and it was too harsh for my poor loaches and I lost them all. So good luck with that!

Once you solved the ich problem and you're back to the feeding problem, I've run into this problem before my self. Try Brine Shrimp pellets (the sinking ones) or breaking up little algae waffers. I've also read (but never tried) that they love raw cucumber, so imbed something like shrimp pellets in the cucumber and as they munch down on that they'll start getting the taste for pellets. Once they start eating the shrimp pellets it's pretty comical because they'll pick it up and swim to hiding places to eat it. Let me know if this helps at all. If they turn out like mine before you know it they'll almost take flake food from your hand.

try getting some worms and gradually introduce flake food at night when all fishes r sleeping..remember to off the lights!