What the new vet needs for a white cloud school
Bring the records that describe the school's whole situation: your water parameter log, tank size and complete stocking list, feeding routine, water change schedule, and notes on any illness, losses or treatments the tank has known. White cloud mountain minnows are small, schooling and rarely examined one by one, so a vet's picture of their health comes from the pattern your paperwork shows — population, water and behaviour over time — rather than from handling an individual fish.
Lead with temperature, this species' defining number
White clouds are cool-water fish from mountain streams, happiest in unheated water and worn down by being kept warm for long stretches. Your handover should state plainly whether the tank runs a heater, what temperature range the water actually sits in across the day, and where the tank stands in the house. Include temperature alongside the usual pH, hardness, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings in the log you hand over. A school that has lost condition, stopped breeding or aged suspiciously fast reads very differently to a vet once a warm temperature history is on the page, and that single fact is the one owners most often forget to mention because the fish never looked cold.
Cover stocking, colony behaviour and feeding
Write down the school's size and rough sex mix, every other species sharing the tank, and whether fry have been appearing among the plants — a white cloud colony that is quietly replacing itself is telling you something good about conditions, just as one that has stopped is telling you something worth investigating. Record the feeding routine in specifics: what foods, how much, how often, and whether the school still rises and competes eagerly. White clouds are mid-water feeders with small mouths, and a note on appetite across the whole school gives the vet a health signal no single fish could.
Add the tank's history and bring home footage
List past problems honestly: any fish lost and the signs noticed beforehand, anything the tank has been treated with, recent additions of fish or plants, equipment failures such as a filter stopping or a heatwave pushing the temperature up. Then bring photos and a short video of the school at home — active, coloured up and feeding — alongside any clip of the behaviour that prompted the visit, since a bagged minnow on a clinic bench shows a vet almost nothing of how it lives. Note when you first saw the change and what the school stopped doing: scattering less tightly, hanging at the surface, ignoring food.
Keep the handover proportionate and complete
White clouds have a reputation for toughness that can work against them at handover time, tempting owners to bring nothing because the species is 'hardy'. Resist that: the vet does not need drama, but does need the full, plain record — water, temperature, stocking, feeding, history — to judge whether a change in the school is a husbandry issue with a simple fix or something that warrants a closer look.
Gathering that log, temperature history, stocking list and footage into one place before the appointment is the role KinsLe's Pet Passport plays for a white cloud school, keeping its records together as a packet any new vet can pick up and use.