LFS has mislabelled hillstream loaches...contemplating them.

[Jayhawk]

Well, my LFS, currently a nearly loach free zone, picked up some "flounders". Not surprisingly, they're hillstream loaches and I'm going to watch them for a week and see how they're doing.

I've read the articles on hillstream loaches and river tanks, but I'm not sure I want to go completely riverine in my 36 gallon tank.

I'm wondering if adding one powerhead to my tank (in addition to the AC rated for a 20-50 gallon tank) if that would add enough movement and oxygen to keep a few happy? Temp is kept at 75 in the tank.

The tank has adquate algae growth, but I'm not sure if my clown pleco, two otos and the ruby shark might not outcompete the hillstreams. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Eric

[Gary Herring]

It would'nt be ideal. That said, the two main prerequisites required for keeping hillstreams are flow and a high level of oxygen - so if you are sure you could provide an abundance of both without it being to the deteriment of your other fish - you may be able to make it work ok. It'd be interesting to hear others views on this, but personally I would'nt keep hillstreams in anything other than a dedicated tank.

Are there any other fish already in the tank? Also, the temperature would be quite a fine line to walk. Is 75f not a little bit low for the pleco?

What hillstream species are they, by the way?

[Jayhawk]

I'd need to go back and check them out to determine the exact species (they were a surprise find last night, and when I was at home I started thinking...which is a dangerous path sometimes).

The temp is fine for clown plecos per Planet Catfish...my bible on catfish.
It's a nice compromise for the ruby shark and single male paradise fish.

The paradise leaves everyone alone (except for the shark with those nice red fins - they seem to infuriate him, but the shark is able to take care of itself and it gives him a hobby).

Eric

[Laura]

A few months ago, I would have thought there would be no problem with a community tank for the hillstreams, but now I believe otherwise. I've lost all of my gastros which were in an asian river theme tank (with a couple of cories and applesnails thrown in when they didn't work out in another tank).

The setup seemed to work well, but I suspect that I've lost them as they didn't compete well for food. Although a disease is possible, they were fine for 6 months. I regularly fed an assortment of frozen food - nearly every day, and lots of veggies for my snails and SAE. I've also been growing algae rocks but as soon as they were put in, the SAE and cory got to them first. I only ever scraped the front glass of the tank.

It's a planted tank with lots of rocks and a bubble wand (during the hot weather I turn off one of my powerheads) - I didn't really notice them disappearing as they spent most of their time in the flow of the bubblewand on the back of the tank, obscured by the bubbles and plants.

Tankmates were danios, SAE, khulis, pangio angullaris, apple snails, and corys.