Loaches Online Forum

Hi all, can Adult Weather Loaches and Kabotias handle water parameters that are 8.7 pH and 19ppm GH?

Thank you, Michael

Wow! That would be a massive shift from most water you'd find in shops and would require extremely slow acclimation.
Also, ammonia is extremely toxic at higher pH levels. You'd have to take great care to avoid ammonia spikes or risk losing fish. See here:
http://www.thekrib.com/Chemistry/ammonia-toxicity.html

Some info on pH:

http://staff.jccc.net/PDECELL/chemistry/phscale.html

and with a bit more chemistry calculations:

http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/184ph.html

Seeing as it's such a massive difference in their normal range, i don't think i'd recommend it long-term, though.

is this your normal water parameter or are you keeping it this high to meet the needs of other fish?

Thank you for your reply. I am trying to eliminate some large tanks from my collection. To do this I need to move many fish and I've heard of people keeping loaches in African Cichlid tanks. The Loaches I mentioned are in a 180 gallon tank and I wanted to convert the tank to African parameters and move the Africans into the tank and try to keep some of the present stock with them. The Africans I have are not aggressive and would leave the Loaches alone but I was concerned about the hard water. The responce you gave me is what I suspected but I was not sure. Anyone in the Northeast US interested in 3 12" Weather Loaches?

In my opinion it is definitely not a good idea to keep them in water with a pH that high and in water that hard. Their physiology is designed to handle the occasional variation in pH or hardness but not that extreme. These are fish that have evolved over time to live in certain conditions but to thrive in the correct ones. You wouldn't expect Rift Valley fish to live in extremely soft water with a pH of 6.0.
You are probably doing the right thing asking for someone to take them off your hands.

Hi Spyder,

You might also find this article of interest: http://www.loaches.com/articles/why-loa ... i-cichlids

Emma