As a followup to the precautionary meds link below... are clown loaches a fish that this should be standard practice for? I noticed Oriongirl mention puffers and some others as fish that you can usually expect to have problems. The one time I tried to keep clown loaches they wasted away on me... seemed to be eating well, water tested clean (and it was an established tank so it was not cycling). They didn't have ich. But in spite of eating they wasted away and died. I read websites like this one later:
Loach Parasites treated with Levamisole hydrochloride
The link basically states that nearly all clown loaches have internal parasites due to being live caught, and the way to get rid of them is to obtain this difficult to find medication (says it is only available through farm feed stores and vets where they sell it for use on sheep). When I called around to feed stores here none of them had it, and the vet told me they'd have to order it.
Is this true? If clown loaches are likely to have parasites as this site describes is there really no more easily available aquarium drug that can be used? Is this really what my fish died from or was it something else? Next spring I'm planning to get another large tank in order to keep these fish, so I'm hoping to get it right this time.
Loach Parasites treated with Levamisole hydrochloride
The link basically states that nearly all clown loaches have internal parasites due to being live caught, and the way to get rid of them is to obtain this difficult to find medication (says it is only available through farm feed stores and vets where they sell it for use on sheep). When I called around to feed stores here none of them had it, and the vet told me they'd have to order it.
Is this true? If clown loaches are likely to have parasites as this site describes is there really no more easily available aquarium drug that can be used? Is this really what my fish died from or was it something else? Next spring I'm planning to get another large tank in order to keep these fish, so I'm hoping to get it right this time.