mysterious Loach death

[Oscar_freak12321]

Ok, I've never had this happen before, but it did. One of my four Clown Loache s has mysteriously dropped off. I went in this morning to feed my fish, to find him floating on the top, colors bleached out, not showing any signs of ripped fins or anything, so I don't think it was my other fish...anyways, he looked fine the day before, eating like a little pig and enjoying himself. I checked the water parameters and everything is at 0. All of the other fish look completely normal, not even showing small signs of stress. What is going on here?:help:

[Jacko]

What type of substrate do you have? Do you have any substrate aerators (ie MTS)? It could be that he hit a gas pocket in the substrate that immediately killed him if he doesn't show any other signs of disease and the other fish are all fine and since I know loaches and cories are really sensitive to that kind of thing.

[Oscar_freak12321]

Well I have some pretty big substrate, but it's not big enough for them to move it(they aren't that big yet), so I doubt it was a gas pocket, but my mind is open to that sort of thing. I sure hope not, because I don't want the rest of my fish dying off beacuse of it either. I'm not really sure what it was, because he literally was swimming the night before like he was living the life...

[abaigael04]

HOw long have you had him?
I can think of nothing - except possibly oxygen? or lack of.

[Oscar_freak12321]

I've had him for a good solid 3 months if not more, and none of my other CLs died from anything like this, or even looked out of joint...that's what was really scary was he was eating like a pig and happy as one too the day before he died...

[Sharon]

The same thing happened to one of mine. He ate and played...4hrs later, he was dead. Water parameters were perfect. I wondered if he choked on something, but I never really knew what happened. The other two are thriving.