Clown Loach Rubbing on Wood ICH?

[RobMiller]

Oh Christ my clown loach is starting to rub on my driftwood a little bit. Does this mean ICH!!!?

The tank is only 3 days old, i know the new tank sysdrome stuff, so i 1/3 of the tank old water in the with new to counteract this.

What conditions do Clown Like? I have PH of 7.8 temp 26' hardness of around 7.

If he is getting ICH will methylene blue/green help?

what can i do to help him?

 

[420Loach]

the rubbing could mean one of two things:

1. hes stressing out from adapting to a new tank, if you have only one clown loach this might be the problem, they like to be in schools. how big is your tank? if you can get at least one more to keep it company

2. hes starting to develop ich. most chems will harm clown loaches because they are a scaleless species, look for little white dots, like specks of salt, on him in the next few days. a very good technique is to raise the temp in the tank to 82-85 degrees f and add some aquarium salt(reccomended dose on box) what other fish do you have, some might not like this treatment so you may need a hospital tank(anything from a ten gallon, to a twenty gallon rubermade container works fine)

good luck with your clown loach hope he doesnt have it at all, but the salt should work if he does they like neutral ph and a temp of 76-84 degrees f. im not sure if the methylene blue/green will help or harm, ive never read the contents.

 

[revfred]

I've had good luck throughout the years with the salt treatment. If you want to try a medication, I'd recommend Kordon's Rid Ich+. It won't harm the loach, plants, or kill the bacteria colonies. Don't forget to remove the carbon filter before you medicate with other than salt and higher temp.

One word of caution . . . make sure you maintain either treatment for a good period of time . . . Ich can be really persistent.

 

[CoNMaN]

Maybe he is just stressed from a non-cycled tank, You said it had only been running for 3 days?

 

[aquatic-store]

Watch out with meds on scaleless fish . Make sure it will not hurt them, I THINK meth blu is a no no but read the dir carefully.
Increasing temp helps with ick. If you do NOT see white spots it prob isn ot ich

 

[Luca]

malachite blue and green are two meds to particularly watch out for when treating clown loaches due to its copper makeup.

 

[smalltank99]

rob we cant help if u dont answer so answer. Dont go jumping to conclusions that if he rubs against wood its ich. The biggest sign is the white salt like crystals if he dosent have those than most likely he dosent have ich!

 

[tetra girl]

There are a couple of possibilites that it could be. One could be a chemical irritation of the skin or gills, caused by raised levels of ammonia, nitrite or very high/low pH. This seems likely since your tank is not cycled.

another possibility is that it is an irritation caused by external parasites such as flukes, fungus, Trichodina, white-spot (Ich) etc on the skin or gills.

Test your water and post us the results. If you start noticing white spots like salt then you can safely say its Ich.

 

[RobMiller]

yeh hes right now guys, i gave him a methylene blue treatment and hes right now. cheers.