"NetMax" wrote in
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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

It's more than just about a slime coating. A fish's immune system has
the basic structure of most other in the animal kingdom, including
humans. High stress levels lead to an overproduction of cortisol by the
adrenal gland, which in turn ramps up the immune system. However the
heightened effect is only temporary, if the stress induced cortisol
levels persist for long the immune system exhausts itself and begins to
fail. There are stats that go along with this stress/health related
phenomenon in the health psychology texts for at least the past 40 years
that I know of.

Ich is not a particularly nasty parasite; it's a simple single celled
organism. A fish usually has to be stressed or in failing health to be
afflicted by the disease, and then it is rarely fatal if you treat the
disease and address whatever third factor has made the fish vulnerable
to it in the first place.


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.

The fish are not pre-treated before they are shipped to us, at least not
for ich. We are in pretty close contact with most of our suppliers.
I'm certain the infection occurs on our premises--I know our tanks well
enough. The only fish I've ever seen come in with ich is the occasional
marine fish... especially box fishes.

I've treated loaches (and most any other fish) for the parasite enough
times to know what works and why. Without getting wrapped up
unnecessarily in the scientific approach--the treatment has even been
run under a simple controls, with loaches split from same shipment both
contracting the disease. Water conditions being equal, the loaches
neglectfully left more exposed took exceedingly long to treat by
comparison, and in fact only completely recovered once they were
provided with adequate cover.

Their diet does not change. Once healthy, these fish are in our tanks
for three weeks at most before they've all been turned over. It's not
worth our while to pamper the diet of a transient fish when it isn't
picky about what it eats.



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

Sounds like a great setup. If I remember correctly, a muddy bottom with
thick dead leaf and wood cover is similar to their natural wild
environment.

The key is giving them spots to duck out of sight. My main point in
this entire thread was two pronged, 1. good hiding spots calm loaches
down, 2. caves are simple and quick to build.