David R

I'd seperate it ASAP incase its a parasite/disease that could spread to the others. I find it hard to believe that it would be getting bullied by the other loaches, they are usually very social and once a pecking order is established then things are fine, in fact if there is a size difference theres usually less aggression as its obvious whos in charge. If the two larger ones are eating all the food and this guy isn't getting any then perhaps you're not feeding them enough?

Ebay FTW, perhaps try the for sale section of US websites like monsterfishkeepers.com or oscarfish.com

Yes you probably could, and being oscars they'd probably eat it. The nutritional value of it would be debatable, IMO there's better things you can feed them so why feed them 'junk food'.

I'd say the bichirs had a go at them, they are quite active hunters at night, don't under-estimate what they can fit in their mouths, because they certainly don't! I've seen scrapes on several of my larger fish that my big ornate would have no chance of swallowing. I'd say the cloudiness is a small cycle, how much 'old' water did you use? Was the filter established or new?

Ok, that shouldn't be hard with only 1cm of gravel and a couple of pieces of driftwood! Should I use boiling water to sterilise them?

I have been treating with whitespot cure for the past week, but I noticed them scratching before then (thats what triggered the close inspection when I noticed a few white spots on a couple of the loaches). The gravel is only about 1cm thick on average, and is regularly syphoned. What do you mean by 'strip cleaning'?

My loaches now seem free of whitespot, but they are still scratching on things, and my big dat has been doing it for a little while too (as well as being dark coloured). Could it be gill flukes? Any other symptoms I should look out for? They are in a crowded tank and possibly a bit stressed, but amonia/nitrate/nitrite are all within acceptable levels and they get regular water changes.

I thought those measurements were in in inches initially, my jaw dropped until I read the next few words... :lol:

Better hurry up, snookie is gonna make a special trip down from whangarei to grab it. He'll be sleeping outside hollywood tonight waiting for 10am.... :lol:

The world is your urinal...

Maybe the loaches were too well fed? You could try starve them for a couple of days.

Nah, this one is only 10-15cm.

HFF Mt Roskill have a royal knife for $80. If only I had my big tank.....

Thats what the guy at HFF suggested too, but I've been keeping CL's for 6 years, doing 30-50% water changes straight from the hose, even in winter, and the three times I have had whitespot have all been in mid-summer when the temperature difference is at its least. Still, I'm going to try to figure a way to heat ~120L of water and get it into the tank without using buckets... I've never heard of PP before, can you tell me a bit more about it?

Peripheral Port? :-? I thought of turning the heater up, but it was already at 27C this afternoon, and I did a 30% change, filled it up straight from the hose and it dropped to 26C. Its pretty heavily stocked too, and I don't want to decrease the oxygen in the water by making it warmer.

The instructions say that one dose is usually enough too.... :roll: I asked the guy at HFF and he said they dose daily, and I noticed the bottles have all had the word "total" crossed out so it says 'Do not administer more than three consecutive doses, unless a waterchange is effected between the third and fourth dose.' Oscarboy salt can be used with loaches, but I'm not that keen on adding too much. You can cure whitespot with high temperature and salt.

Not to mention the lengths you have to go to to make sure its safe to use, as-per Warrens big post a while ago.

I'm currently treating both of my tanks for whitespot. In the 4' I noticed a few spots on a couple of the big loaches and they were scratching on the gravel, and in the 3' the uarus also had a light dose of it. I've been using the Blue Circle stuff, but would like to hit it with something else (obviously not at the same time) just to make sure its all gone. It needs to be safe to use with clown loaches. I've been dosing daily along with a 20% water change and a little salt, how long should I keep this up to make sure its completely gone?

What kink of loaches? I've never had a snail problem in any tank thats had a clown loach in it. In fact I'd take snails home from the LFS to feed them. There must have been a small population living in my canister filter (been running for about 5 years) because I put it on a tank with no loaches and in a couple of weeks there were snails everywhere!

Looks like the fine "grit" HFF sell, comes in either red or grey. Its hard to syphon because it gets sucked up easily, personally I wouldn't use a thick layer of it like that because it will be hard to stir up to clean. Big fish also stir it up when they swim so make sure canister filter intakes are well above the bottom and/or have a pre-filter over the intake. Doesn't bother my sump tho

I usually spray paint hte back of the tank in satin black.

reading > me :oops: Looks great, I like the red substrate, I'm thinking about putting it in my next tank if I don't use tiles.

It is, provided the tank is 4' long and 18x18" wide/high. What are the dimensions of the tank? 3 times filtration isn't very much, with big messy fish like oscars you should aim for more like 10x per hour. And re-housing the red devil would be a good idea, at 5" s/he is getting close to puberty, and once mature will need at least a 75g for himself or he'll shread the oscars.

Looks good, but... How secure are those big upright bits of wood? My 14" ornate would knock them for six with the way he swims around!

I'd love to come check them out, and Robberts palmas collection. Maybe we could do an auckland bichir-keepers crawl... :lol: