r/loaches

I have 5 kuhli loaches, I've had them for about 4 years . 3 black and 2 striped. I noticed today one of my striped ones is WHITE. None of my others have pigment loss. Unfortunately she came out after a water change and I didn't test the water beforehand. There are also corydora catfish in the tank - 20 gallon long planted with sponge filter and heater. Substrate is mostly sand with river stone. Pic of her normal color included. What is this??

Chowing down on my finger

What he doin

We absolutely adore our Weather Loach (Doji), he has such a personality and is huge. We put in a betta log which he started using as a hammock, now we have two in there for him. Just thought I'd share how he hangs out 😊♥️

These two are named bucatini and fettuccine btw

Also I have more than just two in the tank don’t worry!

so my silly noodle son is healing amazingly! as you can see in the pic his scars have really drastically faded over the last week.

I wanted to share this to update anyone who was interested from my last posts and for all the amazing people who were so helpful and kind when I was worried and confused.

However, I am also sharing this update to address the commenter who was condescending and not only misdiagnosed the situation but also rudely insisted that my loach would die if I didn’t blindly listen to their advice to isolate and medicate with harsh treatments.

So I want to remind anyone else who may be on this sub that you absolutely can find really helpful information and reassurance here, but PLEASE keep in mind to always do your own research and take the time to understand and observe the symptoms you are seeing with your own eyes before acting, administering the wrong treatment can have devastating consequences.

The diagnoses that you get on here are a starting point for what to look at, remember that seeing some photos or videos and a small description online does not give the same picture as actually getting to monitor your animal and water. From the suggestions of conditions I got from both online forums and google searches I cross referenced images and descriptions of symptoms with what I was actually seeing and observing, and from there I made the decisions for how to best treat it.

Clearly I made the right decision because this noodle is now named Snowball and he continues to be one of the most confident and curious of my kuhlis, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. ☺️

Have a great day all!

——————————————————————————

ETA:

For anyone who may see this and be having the same issue, here is what it turned out to be, what I did:

I got pretty lucky as far as potential things it could have been go.

It turned out to have just been scratches/scars from an area of driftwood I had missed when sanding it that this guy had chosen to make his nest under.

I try to stay pretty on top of my water quality and readings were 0 ammonia and nitrate and 5.0 nitrite, ph, gh, kh were all stable, and I regularly add indian almond leaves for the benefits and the slight black water look.

So all I really had to do here was sand down the abrasive area on the wood then just maintain my water as is and I added an extra IAL for good measure.

Previous posts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/loaches/s/bSweKFjown

https://www.reddit.com/r/loaches/s/6yv1RyOAfX

First time kuhli owner curious when is chunky turn to too chunky

She is the plumpest girl I have and I adore her SO much. I bought her from my workplace two years ago because she was already 3x the size of the other kuhli loaches! Granted, it’s really not hard, we get babies in but we still haven’t gotten a loach in as big as her since. Even though I have 8 of them, I can always tell when it’s her 🩵 She’s who’s started my obsession

Loachy is such a fatty and always stealing everyone’s food. I don’t expect much from a Costco hotdog with whiskers.

Last friday I decided I wanted to try keeping striped Kuhli loaches again. I previously had 5 striped kuhli loaches and 3 black and tragically lost all 5 striped kuhli loaches to some mystery illness/ unknown cause within 48 hours last August. They had no symptoms or abnormalities and it only killed off my striped, they were fine one minute and then later i found them dead. It was horrible and traumatic.

I bought 4 striped kuhli loaches and added them to the tank. Then when i was watching them, i noticed one of them had ich on their tail. The petstore i got them from must have just gotten them in, plus i'm sure it is hard to monitor them closely when they love to hide so i'm not blaming them for selling me sick fish- they are usually fantastic about stuff like that.

I have delt with ich before so i added half the dose of nox ich( only added medication on the first day) and was watching them all closely the first day, but the second day i was not. Today is day 3, and this morning i saw one of the new striped kuhlis was distressed. I immediately did a 20% water change and added the carbon back into the filter to take the medication out of the water. For the first 30 minutes after the water change, it looked like this fish was improving and was sitting upright but still breathing really heavy. Now it seems like it is regressing and i'm really worried. What else can i do?? Is there anything i can do other than wait? I dont have another tank to put this fish unfortunately

I really dont want this fish to die, i'm really stressing

Like lil dolphin with how interactive they are! So much personality in a fish!

I have 8 in total. My favourite time is when they race the school of rummynose to the other side across the front of the tank. Plus I love the funny tilted way they swim around and play together in general.

What fish did you get that surprised you with their quirks and personality once you brought them home?

I found this rock in a creek bed near Lincoln, Montana. I was curious what would cause it to have the “baseball stitch” pattern? It’s unlikely that it was man-made due to its location but I’m interested in learning how it could naturally form this pattern so consistently! Any info would be appreciated!

louches obsessing over this one plant… + loach butt mention