Clown Loach Not Recovering From Whitespot

[Greystoke]

We've recently had an outbreak of whitespot in our tank which we have been treating over the last week, but unfortunately one of our clown loaches dies and now another is lying on the tank bed panting, still spotty and looking generally like he's not long for this world. I've noted below how we've been attempting to treat this, and was wondering whether there was anything else we could do or should we euthenaise him for his own good?

1. Identified on xmas eve
2. Treated with whitespot treatment on 27th
3. Added 0.5ml / lt salt on 28th
4. Gradually increased temp to 79
5. Clown loach died on 31st
6. 2nd whitespot treatment on 1st

As of today (5th) all of the fish bar the clown loach are looking much healthier and barely a trace of any spots.

Any advice much appreciated, or should we just hand in there and hope the treatment and his will for life will pull him through??

 

[2day]

Sorry to hear about your loss about your Clown Loach They are nice fish.

If you have a spare tank, you can put him in there, and the treatment will treat him much better... I had the same problem. Except I had 4 Clowns with Ich, and only 1 out of the 4 still had it, so i put him in another tank. About a week and a half in that tank, he was so much better.

I hope it works out for you

2day.

 

[Greystoke]

Oh dear, things haven't improved this morning and half of his tail has been eaten!! Still alive and occassionally swimming around.

Unfortunately we do not have a spare tank - would putting him in a bucket be worth while

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I would advise keeping him in the main tank and just continueing the treatment of the fish for at least another fortnight; the whitespot parasite has numerous life cycles and is not visable to the naked eye at various points in its life cycle, so you should keep treating the tank even after it has seemingly disapeared off the fish- if you don't treat all of the fish in the tank, or don't treat the tank for long enough then you could risk having the whitespot come back.
Whitespot has a free-swimming stage in its life cycle where it is not attached to the fish but rather settles down onto surfaces in the tank, so just treating individual fish is pointless if you want to completely rid the fish and tank of whitespot, you really need to treat all of the tank and all of the fish in it at the same time . Doing regular medium sized water changes and cleaning the substrate lots during the treatment (of course remembering to top up any meds lost via the water changes in the tank) will help reduce the background levels of whitespot parasites in the tank and so help the fish to recover quicker .

You should also continue gradually raising the temp in the tank by about 1degree a day until the tanks temp is about 29-30 degree's C, doing this will spead up the parasites life cycles and allow you to kill it off with meds quicker.

I would advise not using salt to treat the clown loaches though as they are particularly sensitive to this and not very tolerant of it (clown loaches evolved it a habitat pretty much devoid of salt so they have not evolved handle it well), as long as you use a good anti-whitespot medicine then the salt is unesarsary and using it will only cause further stress to the clown loach (and could posibly even finish it off). Clown loaches are difficult to treat for whitespot since they have little immunity against it, so its important to treat them in the least stressful but most thorough way posible .

Making sure the tank is well oxygenated/airated during the treatment will also help the fish too (as the whitespot parasite can cause stress to the fishes gills) (also the warmer the tank is the less disolved oxygen there will be in the water so its important to maintain good oxygen levels in the tank during whitespot treatment since the temp in the tank will be quite warm if you're trying to spead up the parasites life cycles etc) and help make their condition less stressful .

 

[aaronnorth]

Oh dear, things haven't improved this morning and half of his tail has been eaten!! Still alive and occassionally swimming around.

Unfortunately we do not have a spare tank - would putting him in a bucket be worth while

are you sure he hasn't got finrot, i have never seen a tail been eaten