My girlfriend owns a dojo loach and had to move him to a new tank. She was attempting to siphon water from the tank (very deep one) in an attempt to be able to catch him better so we could start the floating process. She was holding the hose in the tank and all of a sudden he came up off the bottom of the tank and got stuck on the siphon, but got loose and swam off. We stopped the siphon immediately and checked him out. He has a gash on his side behind his gill. The muscle is torn almost to the spine. He still swims okay, just seems disoriented.

My girlfriend is inconsolable and I'm trying my best to tell her that he's gonna be okay. Do you guys think he can pull through? If so, what do we need to do for him?

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  • I’ve seen fish pull through worse but I wouldn’t have a lot of hope here personally

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  • Keep water very clean, add tannins, and give him time. I’ve seen fish pull through some crazy injuries. Preventing infection and/or fungus is going to be the main thing.

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  • I used to not have a grate on my inlet. I turned off the pump and he got sucked up before the siphon broke on the inlet. He went all the way through the plumbing to the pump in the other room. I didn't notice he was in there, so I turned the pump back on like normal, at which point he got blasted all the way back through the plumbing. This is a video of him right after it happened, he's eating shrimp like nothing happened. I salted the water and he healed up in about a month, no scars or anything. And I put a fucking grate on my inlet! These fish are amazingly durable. Don't count him out.

    https://preview.redd.it/xb9sc04nz09g1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f93bbb3f837cad0a2777509099d06cb52c3fe25

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  • Hard to tell with that photo. I'd say you have a decent chance, given it is a single recent sharp clean injury, and no teeth were involved.

    The main things you can do for him now:

    * maintain high water quality e.g. 20-30% daily changes.
    * slightly lower water temperature towards the bottom end of his comfort range, e.g. 72-74F. this gives him time to heal and slows the growth of bad stuff in his wounds.
    * adding some form of slime coat additive to help keep the wound "covered" and help him rebuild his slime coat over the affected region. e.g. Seachem StressGuard or API Stress Coat
    * given the area of the injury is large, preventatively treating a _quarantine_ tank with him in it with maracyn one and maracyn two together can give broad spectrum coverage preventatively. this protects against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. the downside is it can wipe out the "good bacteria" in the tank, hence why i'd recommend doing this only really in a quarantine tank. If you see redness, swelling, or gray film on the skin, start Maracyn 2 immediately.
    * dosing the quarantine tank with melafix can help a bit, but something like maracyn is the MVP here, aim for a half-dose, due to scalelessness.
    * if you do choose to use salt, _use much less_ than the package recommends or confine yourself to a single quick salt bath dip (still at lower concentration than usually advised for a salt bath dip), and because a dojo is a bottomdwelling fish, make sure the salt crystals have dissolved completely before adding the fish to the bath.
    * If you are going to do any of maracyn/melafix, remove activated carbon from your filtration.

    Anecdotally, I've seen a goldfish that looked like so much fileted fish come back in a quarantine tank after he got chomped on by a much bigger fish. (flaky white, both sides. We literally started calling him Second Breakfast.) That said, that was a goldfish, and I could treat the tank with heavy salt to help with osmosis and wound control on top of the usual preventative dosing of melafix.

    On that note, dojos do not handle salt well! If you do add salt, add at most roughly a third of what any guidelines on the box give you for regular fish, and discontinue immediately if you observe bad lethargy or clamped fins or worse, and don't use it for long. Dojos are scaleless fish and so they are quite sensitive to salt.

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    You genuinely could not have given more helpful and relieving advice. Thank you so much!

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  • If he is a healthy loach and the water is clean he will heal up just fine.

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  • I had a kuhli loach get stuck in one of those unergravel shrimp hides. Had a similar mark all around his body. He still has a little scar. It looks like he has on a chain. 🤣

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