We have been given this information by Waterlife on the use of their medication PROTOZIN when clown loach or similar 'scaleless' fish are in the tank to be treated:

"Protozin should only be used at full strength if the pH is 7 or above otherwise it should be used at half the stated dose. Everything else by waterlife is ok to be used with Clown loach."

PROTOZIN - protozoacide

PROTOZIN is used for the control of all protozoan and fungal infections e.g Whitespot, Fungus, Neon Tetra Disease, Velvet, Costiasis and Trichodiniasis. You will require 4 separate applications to complete the course of treatment. By adding the treatment on days 1, 2 and 3 the product safely compounds in strength and does not burden the already stressed animals with a hard hitting formula. The final dose on day 6 is a preventative measure to try and ensure the organism does not re-occur. PROTOZIN's properties are highly effective at treating all its target organisms. Protozin is our best selling disease treatment world wide.

meds should always be halved for clown loaches. They are very sensitive fish. my Ph is 7.6ishand I lost 2 because i followed the protozin instructions.

i wish I had known this I am just waiting to do the 6 th day treatment at full strength on what I have read here I take it I will have another casualty as I have one clown loach in the tank???

Quote:
no it should be fine

the clown loach are fine with full strength IME and only die due to what ever they've had wrong with them in the first place so marineaqua5's 2 that did die were probably from the thing they had wrong with them

I HAVE JUST NOTICED WHITESPOT ON MY CLOWN LOACHES CAN YOU TELL ME THE BEST WAY TO TREAT THIS.
CHEERS JAS

I used the Interpet stuff two years ago on 4 of the 10 I have now, and they were fine.

Remember to finish the treatment though.

Peter

for what its worth my clown loach have been fine with protozin at 3 times the stated dose a few times without problems (i added extra days ontop of treating at a double dose) so i'd recommend using it at the stated full strength dose just my experiences though

Well the long and short of it is that protozin contains organic dyes , and organic dyes are categorically not safe for use with scaless catfish or scales loaches for that matter. There are , and will always be select individuals for whom a dose of protozin will be too much. Their circulation will radically be affected , some will survive it , other will lose patches of skin, some will fall apart, and some will die. In forums on other sites weve run into this one time and again and I feel utterly confidant in saying that there is NO med safe for use with clown loaches , momyrids, rays, and various catfish. There are only those that are safer than others, and fish that are more resistant than others. Some get away with using treatments on such fish, others dont.Its a matter of personal resistance for the fish. Depending on how certain meds work, using meds at half dose sometimes has simply no effect.

The bottom line, and the thing that keepers of rays, loaches, cats and mormyrids are avoiding worldwide is that before you even consider keeping such fish you really should consider a decent quarantine period of two months as standard, for fish as well as plants, or a grade of ultraviolet steriliser rated correctly.for the volume of your tank, and the flow of your filter outlet.

Until that particular idea sinks in , many keepers worldwide will lose their fish to treatments. When you use a treatment that contains organic dyes for parasite killing duties, you are always, always, taking a risk.

Its the truth, and since people dont want to spend money on UV or limit the choice of fish they buy, they just wont hear it. Trust me , a similar arguement about what meds to use are going on , on just about every forum everywhere in the world. There is as yet, no completely safe anti whitespot treatment for scaless fish. I persoanlly had a giraffe catfish fall to pieces last year because I had to take the risk, and I personally know two people who have lost clown loaches to protozin, but equally they had others that survived the treatment.

Prevention is better than cure, and that means real quarantine, and decent UV. Reckon the average stat for protozin is that it kills about 1 in 25. Seen hundreds of cases. When you see how few truly adult clown loaches there are in the world, youll know it to be true.

We are killing them worldwide in droves, by avoiding quarantine, not equipping ourselves properly with the correct equipment for common and yet sensitive fish like knifefish and clowns, and by using treatment excessively when it is completely possible to avoid it treatments of this nature with these fish. The human race , is as ever , happy to lose a few fish for the sake of the budget.

Such is life, at least until the message gets through.

Thankyou LHG. I am no expert but I read and read about treatments and their effectiveness or not and wonder WHY more fish owners don't go UV.

I purchased one new from ebay $90AU a new bulb every 6 months $20AU = how many medicines that may or may not work? Losing fish after fish. Just going into panic mode when one is sick! Not worth it for me or my fish friends.

Happy swimming I say!

Well there are diseases that because of movement style, habits of adhering to decor, and because of being present in faeces, and direct contact or bite related transmission that UV wont stop.

Therefore UV cannot be relied upon to stop all diseases, and is therefore not totally necessary in standard aquaria, but for those people who own sensitive species, who die when exposed to meds for whitespot, oodinium, and finrot and fungus infections, anything containing copper, formalin, and organic dyes, you be an utter bloody fool not to have an ultraviolet steriliser.

In fishkeeping , whitespot, oodinium, and fungus are as common as the flu, and its almost inevitable that most peoples fish will get one of them at some point, even if they only caught it off a batch of new plants, and on that day the sensitive fish may die from the meds.Clown loaches, knifefish, rays, sensitive catfish- people, just GET a UV system. It will odds on save your fish's life at some point. Its also very handy to have it for their QT on aquisition. With fish that are sensitives its a very good idea to give them a sybstrate free tank with no porous surfaces and heavy rated UV. Dont forget while many shops have UV, they dump hundreds of fish in and out of their system day in and day out, move plants around, dont treat with meds properly, and chances are their UV is not sufficiently rated for their systems total capacity and flow rate, and it becomes your job to use UV better than they have on your fish's aquisition to make sure they are genuinely free of common parasites like whitespot.

Something the shop cannot guarantee because they stock in a way and use UV in a way that negates much of its contagion controlling benefits. Their concern is that the UV on their systems keeps the fish appearing healthy, and symptoms subdued, thats not the same as truly using UV to protect fish or completely ending parasite breakouts by ensuring the usage level is high and complete enough - and especially important -LONG ENOUGH, to kill every last parasite. If you want UV to work for you , you have to apply it in a way that breaks chains of infection, including consideration for the amount of time parasites take to mature, or will remain dormant.

Using UV successfully requires extended periods, a fish on a shop system for a week will have symptoms subdued, but may still carry surface protozoa, they will survive, and when they get back to your place- reproduce unhindered. Their UV was causing percentile losses of parasite neonates , enough to stop much of the visible infection, but probably didnt completely end it.

The "no quarantine, bung it on the system straight from supplier, sell it a few days later" ethic will not stop the transmission chain, you have to do it at home.