"dc" wrote in message
...
"Altum" wrote in
news:1138826741.423702.265590
@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

Ever since I've been providing newly imported clown loaches with large
well constructed caves I've seen our ich infection rates drop to zero.

Now THAT is valuable information. How large relative to the loach and
how do you suggest constructing them? Should the entrance be similar
to the size of the fish or are larger openings OK?

The more loaches that can fit in the cave the better. The most important
point seems to be keeping the cave relatively dark. The entrance can be
very large, so long as it isn't allowing a lot of light inside. Slate rock
works very well. I try to assemble things so that the cave entrances are
large but low lying.

Interesting. It would seem counter-productive. Reducing the incidents of
an external parasite (Ich) which relies on being able to locate prey in
close proximity from where it hatches in the substrate, by promoting a
behaviour (with large caves) causing the fish to remain for extended periods
of time in close proximity to each other, sitting directly on a limited area
of the substrate. (!?!)

This suggests that either the fish's natural defence (slime coat) is
significantly improved by contact with each other, or just the lowering of
their stress level vastly improves their slime coat production (at a faster
rate than I would expect, but fish are full of surprises) - or - you just
got in a batch(s) of healthy disease resistant fish (or your suppliers is
pre-treating them) and you're incorrectly attributing the positive results
to a coincidental change. Your positive results might also be partly due to
whatever diet you have designed for these fish.

Regardless, I applaud your efforts, and please continue reporting your
findings. For my Clown loach tanks, I used reduced lighting (1/2wpg), a
substrate of fine gravel covered by dried leaves, covered with lots of
driftwood chunks. If they got trapped in the wood crevices, the driftwood
was buoyant enough that they could cause the wood to lift into the water.
If I did it again, I think I would switch to a thin layer (3/4") of sand, to
let them burrow a bit, increase the lighting to 3/4wpg and fill the tank
with Hornwort, however I never achieved consistent success with these fish.
The best I did was about 25% with larger specimens (4"), 75% with 2-1/2" to
4", 95% with the 1-1/2" to 2-1/2", and then 75% with anything smaller than
1-1/2". To summarize, large or too small and my acclimation success rate
dropped significantly!
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