This is VERY strange... Any advice?

Hello All... I have a 180 gallon African Cichlid tank that is fairly heavily stocked with mostly peacocks, haps, mbunas and a few other random fish. My water parameters are all good and all the fish look good and healthy. Today, when I came home, I found both of my 3-4" Clown Loaches dead. Neither looked as if they were injured or picked on - they were just dead. All of my other fish are fine and I have other scaleless catfish that are fine as well...

Any ideas?

The only thing I can think of is the loaches got buried alive and died. Then they were redug up. Sorry for your loss.

Buried alive? I don't think I follow you. I didn't do any gravel or water changes yesterday, so I don't see how that would happen, unless I'm misunderstanding you. Thanks for your input!

Loaches sleep in holes or under a rock. Your fish dig and move gravel around. While loaches were sleeping gravel covered them. Then fish dug more and uncovered them. I had this happen. I discover the loach as I was redoing the tank. Just a thought.

also loaches do like quite a bit of O2 in the water. How long have you had them and what kind of filtration is on the tank? I understand the buried alive but both in one night seems odd.

Keep in mind....OP mentioned these are clown loaches. :oP

Interesting tank mix to keep loaches with those cichlids. Can you post any water parms?

Were their stripes faded at all?

Opps missed that (brain fart when posting)

Dr. Who wrote:

Loaches sleep in holes or under a rock. Your fish dig and move gravel around. While loaches were sleeping gravel covered them. Then fish dug more and uncovered them. I had this happen. I discover the loach as I was redoing the tank. Just a thought.

Even if this is not exactly the way it happened in this case, it's a great heads up to the loach keepers out there to know that something like this COULD happen. It sounds feasible to me.

Thanks all... I have had Cichlids with Clown Loaches for years and years, and never had an issue. With these loaches both being fairly good size, I have a hard time thinking they could be completely buried alive without even realizing it, and then being completely dug up again, both in the same day... but I guess anything is possible. My Ammonia is 0, Nitrites are 0, Nitrates are less than 20, ph is about 7.4-7.6, temp is 78-80, filtration is four healthy canisters cyling a 180 tank at about 1000 gph or so.

The only thing I can add is that I added about a 1/4-1/2 of the recommended dose of PH UP a few days back b/c my tap water ph is a little lower than what I need. But, I always do that in extremely small slow doses, when needed.

Well....take the burying part off the table with these loaches.

And a very big YIKES!! on the pH UP. Throw it out. Recipe for disaster. I'm not saying that is what happened but you're more suseptible for crashes using it.

pH is a little on the high side for me with clowns. But that's just me.

How were their colors and how long have you had them in the tank?

I was raising my ph to get it back to my normal of 7.4 or so, which is what I try to keep my Cichlids at. I've had the same ph, more or less, for a long time. The loaches have been in the tank for three or four months.

Why do you say pH Up causes crashes? I've not heard that before. Think the Clown Loaches were just very sensitve to even the smallest ph changes?

Not that this helps your loach problem but I thought African Cichlids liked their pH higher than 7.4.

Hope you figure it out.

snoskiur wrote:

I was raising my ph to get it back to my normal of 7.4 or so, which is what I try to keep my Cichlids at. I've had the same ph, more or less, for a long time. The loaches have been in the tank for three or four months.

Why do you say pH Up causes crashes? I've not heard that before. Think the Clown Loaches were just very sensitve to even the smallest ph changes?

The pH chemicals are not stabilizers. They are just "quick fixes" if you will. With continued use, the waters natural properties will eventually lead to a pH crash. Same with pH DOWN. The one thing that should never be done to a fish tank, is try to alter the pH with chemicals. Very bad ju-ju. ;o)

Now, jumping on the other side of the spectrum...your fishies. While clowns can tolerate a higher pH (7.4), it's definately best to keep from neutral (7.0) on down. You're at opposite ends of fish keeping between the clowns and cichlids. Don't get me wrong...I'm not saying it won't work. The conditions are just not ideal.

It's one of the reasons I inquired about the color. It's a tell-tale sign with clowns.

Oh...and while they aren't super sensitive fish, they are more suseptable to changes than other species.

As far as I could tell, the Clown Loaches had good color before and after they were dead... There was no obvious damage to them, ether.

Hmmmm....

any kind of maintenance on the tank leading up to their death? cleaning? water change? etc?

If coloration was still nice after passing, I'm suspecting something amiss with water parms.

The odd thing that stands out is that you lost both of them at the same time.