skinny clown disease?

[rmalford]

Has anyone successfully cured a skinny clown? I have one from a lfs that has become progressively skinny in a matter of a week and has been skinny for about a week now. The loach is eating.

[dblondfemme]

I would put him in a quarantine tank and dose him with either pimafix or melafix...can't remember which one....as well as aquarium salt and put the temp at 75-77. You can monitor the food and see how he does there.....just my $.02

[Sea-agg09]

Could be a parasite. You'll want to use a medication with praziquantal to flush the fish's system. Prazi is a dog de-wormer but is used all the time in fish treatments. You can either use a QT tank system, where you can use API's general cure (has prazi) in the water. The other option is to soak pellets or other food in a liquid prazi. Liquid prazi is hard to find and usually only comes in big bottles that are costly. Prazi also taste like the other side of a donkey's (we'll say foot), and fish spit out food and run in terror. Soaking food in both prazi and garlic is the only way I've found to get fish to eat prazi.

[Sea-agg09]

Also forgot to say if the tank isn't 20,0000000 gallons, and you don't have inverts or crazy sensitive fish, you could just treat your whole tank with general cure.

[eklikewhoa]

Wasting I think is the term

[sountfc]

http://www.loaches.com/Members/shari2/levamisole-hydrochloride-1

[Astex]

If you search the loaches.com website, the most common advice is to alternate de-wormers and antibiotics to cover the two most likely causes of the disease.

The loach eating is a good sign that it still might be curable. I have some levamasole and flubenazadole that I could part with if you want to try either if the other meds listed above don't work.

[Sea-agg09]

The fact that it is still eating makes me believe it is parasitic. Parasites basically steal nurishment from the host, so even though it is still eating, it is not getting the food.

[rmalford]

Don't really have any $ for meds right now. I think I might have some tetracycline for humans. I could probably get a hold of some fix if that will work. I'd prefer to give him a bath. I'll do some more research. Thanks to everyone for their input.