Sick Fire Eel

[esky]

Hi - I need advice about fire eels - mine looks as if the end is coming. He/she hasn't been interested in food for 2 days. Did a clean of the filter material at the weekend. All 6 of my clown loaches were present and correct at that time. My 2 spanner barbs were faded and dead on Monday. The leopard Ctenapoma (?) is fine, so's the ghost knife and the butterfly pantodon and the 2 angels. Only one small scared looking clown loach can be found! It looks pretty scared and sick (not surprisingly if what I think has happened, has actually happened) Can I conclude that the eel has made him/herself ill on a feast of 5 clown loaches? Most of it's body is lying prone on the bottom of the tank and it's head is up and all it can do is frantically work it's gills. I have done 2 water changes since the weekend and the nitrate,nitrite, ammonia, ph levels are all normal. Hoping someone can come up with an idea to help Eelie survive. Thanks

[henward]

Some questions:

What is the ACTUAL readings of the water params.

Seems like you had a spike that killed off some fish and some fish that were stronger survived.

Also what is the diet of the eel?

the eel eating clown loaches can kill it, but generally, i think that its the water.

cleaning out filters and changing water when you see sick fish is most of the time too late, prevention and maintaining good water is key.

its like a human eating and living in bad conditions, then suddenly you give it good food, at times - they just give up.

give us the water parameters in the actual measurements when you tested it before water chagnes.

also give us

1) litres and size of tank

2) filter you use - and media used in filer

3) water measurements

4) temperature

5) your water change regime

wghen you change water TOO much you can actyually make it worse from the shock, small water changes frequently is better.

so maybe instead of 20% daily in one go, do 2x 10% twice a day, or even 3x 10% in one day.

[esky]

Thanks for your response and advice

I had to euthanase the eel. It was too much to see it struggling when the fins weren't working and it was lying on it's back. I was going to open it up once it had died in the freezer but when i went back to check on the other tankmates there was a strange looking addition to the tank in the form of a furry mass with a mangled orange and black nucleus to it. Easy to recognise that it was once a clown loach and that Eelie had regurgitated it before he rolled over on his back. So, happily, the fault wasn't mine. I have now replaced the eel with a polypterus ornattipinnis (Polly for short) which is rather cruelly putting the remaining clown loaches on borrowed time. I know now that the eel only swallowed two loaches as the others came out of hiding once things settled in the tank. I could write a story about the changed behaviours of the tank inhabitants when faced with a dying eel - it really unsettled them all.