Group condition and colour findings come first
A white cloud mountain minnow vet entry should capture the group's condition as the vet described it: bellies neither hollow nor swollen, the red in the fins bright or faded, and the gold stripe along each flank clear. Write down whether the vet examined a sample fish closely or assessed the school from your photos, and note any individual that looked ragged, bent, or set apart from the others. Minnows are inexpensive and often treated as background fish, which is exactly why a written baseline matters — without one, a slow decline across the whole school looks like nothing at all.
Temperature: the reading this species lives by
Write down the tank temperature you reported and what the vet said about it, because white clouds are cool-water fish that quietly suffer in a warm room. Record whether the vet connected any finding — faded colour, shortened lives in past groups, poor breeding — to the tank running warm, and note the spot the thermometer sits, since a reading near a light or filter can mislead. If the vet suggested relocating the tank away from a radiator, dropping a heater setting, or adding a small fan over the surface in summer, write the instruction and the target range they gave in their words.
School numbers, losses, and additions
Log the white cloud school's headcount at every visit, with losses and additions since the last entry. Note where new fish came from and whether they were quarantined, and record the vet's advice if numbers have been drifting down without obvious signs. A school that shrinks from twelve to seven across two visits tells a story a single snapshot never will, and vets lean on exactly this kind of count when deciding whether to look at the water, the food, or the fish themselves. Honest numbers, including the unexplained losses, are the most useful thing in the whole entry.
Feeding and water-column behaviour from home
Add what you see at home: whether the minnows rise eagerly for food, how they take finely crushed flake versus small frozen foods, and where in the tank they spend the day. White clouds that once cruised the middle water but now hug the bottom or the surface film are telling you something, and the vet will want the timeline. Note spawning behaviour too — males displaying with flared fins, eggs scattered in plants — because breeding condition is a useful overall health signal in this species and its absence after success is worth a line.
The change list and return thresholds
Finish with the changes the visit produced and the thresholds for returning sooner. Write down each adjustment the vet advised, from a new feeding rhythm to a moved tank, and mark the date each was done so the next entry can judge it fairly. List the call-sooner signs in the vet's framing: several fish fading at once, a minnow isolating itself, clamped fins across the school, or deaths on consecutive days. For a hardy fish, the danger is assuming nothing can be wrong; the written list corrects that instinct at the right moment.
Small entries after every visit add up to a real medical history for a school of minnows, and keeping them in the KinsLe Pet Passport means the whole cool-water story sits in one packet ready for whoever treats them next.