What to feed clown loaches

On 29 Jan 2005 15:13:01 GMT, (TYNK 7) wrote:

Subject: What to feed clown loaches
From: Victor Martinez
Date: 1/27/2005 8:23 A.M. Central Standard Time
Message-id:

TYNK 7 wrote:
Ok..explain this "skinny disease" and what it really is.

In the loaches.com website they call it either skinny disease or wasting
disease. I think it's a bacterial infection that is pretty much
impossible to recover from. I haven't heard of any clown loach that had
it and survived. The only sign of it is that your loach starts getting
skinny and then dies.

What about feeding antibiotic flake?
I ask because it appears my lovely Claude may have this.
I've had Claude and Joaques for a while now. J. has always been more colorful
and robust. He's actually kind of a chub.
C. has always been not so colorful..not pale, just not as vivid as J.
Within the past 2 weeks Claude has become thin...where Joaques is still robust
looking.
I'm left wondering is this going to spread to J? Does it spread by predation or
just contact?
I have another large Clown on hold at my LFS because with this situation if
it's catchy then I would buy more than just the one and keep them all in
another tank (after quarantine), until Claude is either fine or gone. Same goes
for Joaques.
I am so upset about this. They were do healthy and robust for so long. They
came in the shop clean and have been for many months. They're best set Clowns
I've had. So friendly and are always begging for food with their heads right
out of the water.
I'd really hate to lose them both, but losing Joaques would hurt a little more,
as I am very attached to him. He's the big ham. As bad as the Angels and
Bettas..always has to have to his body right in front of my face when I'm
looking into the tank.
As of now, I am treating with antibiotic flake because I had no idea what I was
dealing with.
Oh...I had always though "wasting away" disease was a TB thing.
I know TB symptoms mimic several other diseases....so I guess I'm now off to do
some researching.
= p ---- Tynk pouting for my Claude

How old and how big are your Clowns Tynk?

Please Tynk, keep us informed. I suspect us Clown lovers all worry
about our pets. I know I do.


dick

"Shawn" wrote in message
...
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.

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 ?


I've been following this thread and also observing my Clowns at the same
time. I have 6 Clown loaches all bought from different batches from the 2
LFS's that I use. They are of different sizes - from 4" down to 1". On all
six I can now see the skeletal structure - the smaller ones had started to
"surface feed" as had one of the bigger ones. Since reading this I have now
put them on a diet of "Cat Fish Pellets" and "algae wafers" which they are
eating as if they have never fed before.

I'm hoping that this is a nutrition issue. In which case I only have myself
to blame. Also I hope that this is the case in your instance. I would hate
to lose my Clowns. Anyone who has owned these delightful fish knows how I
feel. At the moment I cannot believe that it is an infection/infestation
that has affected all of my Clowns - like you I hope we can come through
this.

Gill

BTW I lost one of the original batch 5 weeks ago...when I was convinced it
was a parasite case but the symptoms were entirely different - he went grey
and lost his joy of life and stopped feeding.

Dick wrote in
:

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.

Hello, just noticed this post... I had the exact same thing with three new
clown loaches I brought. After a while I found one thin as a rail (other
two were fine).

It doesn't necessarily have to be any disease, it can just be a food issue
of what they do and don't like. These guys are hunters, snail eaters and
tend to like the real foods (live snails or frozen other foods) better than
the flake stuff... expecially after the shock of a move. I was feeding a
mix of Tubifix dried worm cubes (which the other two loaches ate) and
flakes and didn't pick up that while two loaches were eating the tubfix
worms one wasn't.

What I did to save the guy is I brought some frozen bloodworms (a genernal
fish fav) and after basically overfeeding the rest of the fish on the
regular good I thawed the blood worms and hand fed the loach. Difficult as
the other fish wanted in on the action (why I did the big feed first to
keep them away) and loaches are shy but with persistance I got him to eat
by moving very slowly and basically putting the blood worms right in his
face. Did this for about a week (one feeding a day) and then stopped hand
feeding but kept up with the bloodworms (would shove a bunch of them into
the loaches hiding area for all of them). After a while the skinny one
fleshed back out and also started to eat the dried tubifix worms like the
other two. It was amazing to watch his recovery

Been 4 years now and I still have all three... but that one is still the
smallest of the three but he's my fav :P

Pete.