On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 18:18:50 -0500, "Shawn"
wrote:

I bought 3 clown loaches about 9 months ago when I had a snail problem.
They did a number on them and now they've been eating the reguluar pellet
and flake food I feed my other fish (mainly tetras, platy's etc). I also
notice they like to chew to the algae wafers I throw in occasionally for my
plecos.

However, last night when I was doing my bi-weekly cleaning, I was looking
down from above in the tank while vacuuming with my water python and I
noticed one of the clown loaches was literally paper thin side to side.
There's no meat on his bones at all. The other 2 look fine.

I would consider that the "2 look fine" as encouraging. If it was a
tank condition problem or feeding problem, I would expect all 3 to
suffer.

Fish do get sick. Like people, they can live in the same home and
have different health. I got a shipment of 7 Clowns that all had Ich.
At the time I only had a 75 gallon community tank. I had no
medications. It took close to 2 weeks to get Ich medication. By that
time 5 of the 7 were really looking weak. I did the medication cycle,
but the 5 didn't look any better. I finally disposed of the 5. The
other 2 responded to the ich treatment so I kept them even though they
still had a few white spots. I now had some experience and with hind
sight, I realized none of the other 60 fish in the tank got the ich.
So I quit the medication and did some aggressive water changes. The 2
Clowns are with me today and there has never been another problem.

By the way, the dealer was very sorry. He confirmed he had a shipment
that had Ich and asked me to be patient. He had a new shipment, but
wanted to observe them rather than take the chance of sending any more
sick Clowns.

Is it that they're not getting the proper nutrition after all from the other
stuff and it's just showing on one more than the others ? Or maybe this one
has a parasite or something.

Any ideas ?


Can you isolate the one in a "hopital" tank?

dick