Hey shark16,
Regarding your situation on medicating your loaches are whats called somewhat tricky to treat. Due to them not having scales.
The reply from this lotus person is very true and accurate my compliments towards this persons knowlege.
There are other medicants out there as well,, The ones youve mention all are cooper based of course, but that dosent mean you need to only go that route. Yes for clown loaches your limited.
But before you detrmine what meds. you want to use find out what type of parasites you are dealing with, and how harsh of a treatment you will need.
Is it fish lice, gill flukes, chilodonella, or simply ick? then see how the fish are reacting hiding in corner, rubing against objects, or is it visual where you can see it. All this helps narrow down the diagnose towards what it might be.
As for ick i tell people to relate it to the common cold? Its a simple thing any fish can get yet theres hundreds of medicines that claim to cure it. Its actually a lot simpler to cure it and with an once of prevention you can avoid it altogether.
Understanding the disease is 90% of the cure. It is brought on by many factors, and most of them can be stress related vs buying an infected fish and putting it in the tank. First steps you take is check the fishes water quality. PH ,temp, and what tank mates its with. You now start narrowing down. is the PH to high or is it uncompatible towards its fish mates, Or a common one is my temperature to high or to low, if you see a pattern its usually just stress related and can be easliy hepled buy these ajustments and another interesting discovery i learned from my raising of discus is how often do you see ick in a discus tank?
The reason you dont is the ick cannot live long in warm waterwith high temperatuers it intensifies its incubation period then dies right off no medications were used at all, just simple raising of the temp. Of course there are exception of the rule where its so severe that you need chemical assitance.
And the medicine you have mentioned do not under any circumstances mix them together this can cause a lethal cocktail. unless they are formulated to work together, Again depending what its needed for metronidazole is mostly used for intestenal parisites along with hole in the head diseasesand some gill flukes. Try a med that states its safe for loaches . For chilodonella Malachite Green can help and a trypaflavine bath can to. Be careful with the formalin it can be very lethal to both you and the fish. An over all treatment in a fish tank every now and then is like a doctors check up for us, its an once of pevention that can save proublems down the road. hope this helps Shark16.
Tonyro.
