Loaches Online Forum

Hi there,

Yesterday I bought two "Butterfly Plecs" (that's how they were described in the shop). However, having come online to research them today it appears that they may actually be these chaps - Hillstream Loaches....

Now, the reason I came on to research these now is that I don't think the guy in the aquatics shop gave me good info. He said they would be ok in my bi-orb tank along with 3 large coldwater fish.

They went in ok, clung to the sides as you would expect, but a little while later - they had disappeared! I couldn't see them anywhere and haven't seen them since. Could they be well hidden on the gravel or on the plants? Or could my biggest Goldfish have gulped them down as a meal?!

I would dread to think the latter. But does anyone know if these guys can dig beneath gravel (i.e to hide under it?).

Any help offered would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Hi lukeowl.

I wish I could go up to this fish shop person and slap them upside the head.

Read this and you'll see why the setup you have is wholly inappropriate for these fish.

http://www.loaches.com/hillstream_loaches.html

Martin.

Well, we have plenty of flow in our tank (ask LES..) and 1 comet and 1 shubunkin (I know we're bad and are planning to split them up, but the fish were there first.) However, the P.Cheni's we have seem quite happy considering they have been breeding lately (we found 2 more babies in the tank on saturday.

How big were/are the loaches and how big are the goldfish ?

We have noticed that our loaches like to burrow under things, one will burrow under the bridge, stick upside down to the bridge and you only know he's there because there's a hole in the stones. If they are small, they could burrow right under something, sit in the middle of it and hide _very_ well. I watched one of our 'toddler' loaches do this last week.

dlenn

dlenn wrote:Well, we have plenty of flow in our tank (ask LES..) and 1 comet and 1 shubunkin (I know we're bad and are planning to split them up, but the fish were there first.) However, the P.Cheni's we have seem quite happy considering they have been breeding lately (we found 2 more babies in the tank on saturday.

How big were/are the loaches and how big are the goldfish ?

We have noticed that our loaches like to burrow under things, one will burrow under the bridge, stick upside down to the bridge and you only know he's there because there's a hole in the stones. If they are small, they could burrow right under something, sit in the middle of it and hide _very_ well. I watched one of our 'toddler' loaches do this last week.

dlenn

Hey that's cool. I have a largeish comet and a medium shub, a small Black Moor, a baby "Ghost Carp" that's about 4 months old and another fish that I am uncertain of the breed. The shop had it labelled as a Golden Orfe, but it looks slightly different - he's medium sized.

The loaches are about an inch in length. Not very big bless them.

Could be hiding in the middle airation tube thing.
As you will have read by now these fish NEED high oxygen content water so are likely to congrigrate around any source of turbulance or airation. Unfortunatly a bi-orb is not at all suitable for hillstream loaches and they will probably not live that long, let alone be happy. It's not your fault, you've been mis-sold them by an un-educated and ignorant LFS. Is it really to much to ask that these shops know at least something about the livestock they sell? If I were you I'd go back to the shop you got them from, give them a copy of the hillstream article and ask them to at least correctly name their fish for a start.

Spot on Gary - one of them was on the side of the airation filter tube and the other was actually sucking away at the top of the tank.

Is there anything I can do to make their life more enjoyable? Airstone's? Add some rocks for them to cling to?

I really want to make these guys feel at home and make it as enjoyable an experience for them as possible.

They are still both around though. This morning one of them was skimming along the gravel - he seemed quite happy, but then I guess it's hard to tell.

The other fish are leaving them well alone, but when the Comet brushes past the loaches run along and find somewhere else to hide!

Any advice on how to make this a better environment would be appreciated.

Oh, and don't worry - I'll be taking the Hillstream article down to the store and having a word in their manager's ear.

Lukeowl,

The most essential and fundimental requirement of Hillstream loaches is highly oxygenated and clean, clear water. This is an absolute minimum so the first thing you need to do is work to acheive this.

For oxygenation, water movement provided by a powerhead would be preferable. However, I doubt it would be easy to fit one in a bi-orb, and even if you did, it would probably be to the detriment of your other fish. Next best thing would be, like you say, to add an airstone or two. Basically, The more airation the better. Try also to break the surface of the water by positioning a filter outlet above it.

As for the clean water part, your tank MUST be cycled and fully mature. If it is not, you will need to evacuate the hillstreams immediately, either to another (mature) tank or back to the shop. This is because hillstreams are incredibily sensitive to nitrIte in particular, as well as ammonia. NitrIte harms all fish by inhibiting their ability to uptake oxygen from the water and dissolve it into their blood (brown blood disease). This condition, although harmful, may be tolerated for a while by fish such as goldfish who can survive low oxygen conditions. Hillstreams however, need high oxygen levels at all times, so even a seemingly low level of nitrIte will quickly kill them.

If your tank IS cycled, then great, but keep an eye on the water quality by testing it regularly. Also make sure you carry out regular partial water changes, say, 25% weekly. Again, this is even more important for hillstreams than other fish. Remember, they are wild caught river - fish!
Also, you don't say what size your bi-orb is, but even if it's the largest one (60L I believe), you seem to be at the maximum stocking level already, so please dont add more fish - the filter won't be able to keep up.

When you are happy that the water is clean and well oxygenated, you can then start to make the environment a bit more hillstream - friendly. Add quite a few rounded pebbles and/or some bogwood. As well as giving the fish a natural surface to rest on, hopefully after a while algae will start to grow on the pebbles, and the fish will graze upon it, as they do in the wild. Also, a few hiding places is a good idea. Use some small paddle stones or flat pieces of slate and stack them leaving gaps big enough for the fish to hide in, or make some little caves using the flat stones stuck together with AQUARIUM SAFE silicone sealant, which you can buy in most aquatic shops.

Another thing to consider is feeding the fish. This is one of the reasons why, IMO, hillstreams are not really suitable tankmates for goldfish. As you will know, goldfish are absolute pigs, and will smell, hunt down and devouir any food within minutes of it being put into the tank, no matter how well it is hidden. Hillstreams are, in contrast, grazers and you could have real trouble keeping food in the tank long enough for them to find it. Even if they did, in the acclimatising period (which can be weeks), most hillstreams won't eat anything we offer them, only grazing on any algae and micro-organisms that are present in the tank (another reason why a mature tank is essential).
To try to overcome this problem, you could try hiding food in small nooks in between rocks, etc, where the goldfish can't get it.
Feed them dried foods such as algae wafers and catfish pellets, and frozen live food should be given regularly too. Hillstreams seem to love bloodworms in particular. You could also grow your own algae on pebbles to feed your fish. A number of us on this forum do this, see these threads for details:

http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=808

http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=922

You dont really need a seperate tank though, you could grow algae by just filling a jar with old tank water, add a little aquatic plant fertiliser and some pebbles and stick it outside somewhere its going to get alot of sun (a greenhouse is ideal!). Another good feeding idea is cucumber - most hillstreams like it and it should'nt interest the goldfish. Cut a 1cm thick slice, boil it for 1min to soften it slightly, and put it in the tank weighted down with a plant weight.

Basically, as I said before, a goldfish bi-orb is not really suitable for hillstream loaches and the shop should have told you so. Goldfish and hillstreams have completely opposite requirements. Perhaps in the future you could set up a proper river tank (see Martins design) for them. Only then will you really start to see the best of these fascinating fish. But, in the meantime, at least you have taken the trouble to do some research and find out about the fish you are keeping. If you follow all the above then their is no reason why your loaches cannot live a long and reasonably happy life. Hillstreams and goldfish CAN be kept succesfully together - LES and dlenn are evidence of that. But theirs is an exceptional case, and as a rule it should not be attempted. My main problem is, that 99% of people who are sold these fish will take for granted the wrong advice of ignorant LFS's, who en masse (with some exceptions) seem to think that just because they can be kept in unheated tanks, hillstream loaches are goldfish bowl accesories. A huge percentage of the fish imported perish as a result.

Good luck,

Gary

P.S. By the way, do you know what species you have? If noy check out the LOL species index.

Hi Lukeowl,


I fear that your biggest problem with the BiOrb style tank will be the lack of surface area where the water is exposed to the air. As you might have gathered from all the previous responses the key word for hillstream loaches is Oxygen. The vast majority of oxygen exchange takes place at the surface of the tank. Air stones create water movement and bubbles bursting at surface help increase the energy available to the process but don't add oxygen directly. With the enclosed nature of the BiOrb systems you are going to need a huge amount of agitation to make up for the lack of surface area. Looking at our standard rectangular tank practically the whole of the water surface is in motion, we have two air curtains, one at each end of the tank, a primary powerhead (greatly over rated for the size of tank) drawing water from the under gravel and a secondary powerhead linked to a spray bar specifically positioned to cause movement at the surface. I don't think you are going to be able to have any where near enough movement with a Black Moor in the tank, they seem to have enough of a struggle swimming in still water ;-)

I think that Gary has given you as much technical advice as can be mustered on the subject but I'll chip in a few of my personal experiences on feeding. Our comet and shubunkin are greedy monsters to the extreme and will go to any length to track down food. This has caused real problems as they do love the sinking pellets we feed the loaches. To get around this we have constructed feeding stations for the loaches consisting of aquarium safe plastic tubing which can only be accessed by the loaches. This is not a trivial exercise as there have been occasions where the fish have managed to excavate the tubes and cause the food to be flushed out. We have had to specifically wedge the tubes under bogwood pieces and guard the entrances with smooth stones (the loaches love to pose on these) which provide limited access routes. This works well enough but you still get the fish congregating at the entrances to grab what little fragments of food flush out. It also has the problem of forcing all of the loaches to come to the same location to eat, our cheni are ruled by the alpha male who ferociously guards his territory in the tank, of course the feeding station being the best territory is his. It can take a while for the tag chase to draw away the dominant fish so the others in the pecking order get a nibble. This does make for a very entertaining feeding time with lots of movement and interaction between the loaches.
I will contradict Gary to say that our fish are just as interested in cucumber as the loaches and will happily munch on it.

As Dlenn mentioned we have had success in breeding our loaches (although we suspect that a large majority of the fry have been going to fatten up the other fish). This was not intentional but a very nice surprise but is forcing our hand in the need to acquire a new tank as we are now overstocked. We have been keeping fry that we found in a breeding net and have recently released some of the larger fry into the main tank, they are now 1-1.5cm in length and growing well, so far the fish are leaving them alone and they are undeniably cute.

Having been sold these guys as a 'yeah, they'll clean all the algae in your fish tank' solution I'm only too aware of how these lovely fish are pushed onto unsuspecting owners. BiOrb also seem to have a very nice system but seem best suited to keeping small tropical species, it would be nice if fish shops pushed this aspect of them and did not sell them to house inappropriate fish.

I hope that you can find a way of accommodating these fish as they are truly wonderful to watch but do have specific needs that I suspect you will not be able to meet in a BiOrb.

Good luck!
LES..

Forgive my ignorance....I didn't know what a Bio-orb was till I looked at this:

http://www.seapets.co.uk/static-content ... tanks.html

Now I'm really worried. I would agree that they just ain't up to the job for anything more than small tropicals due to the lack of surface area, plus for hillstreams they just don't have the floor area for natural behaviour.

This is design over function IMO......and Hillstreams are designed for something vastly different.

Martin.

Hi all,

Just an update. Both of the Hillstream loaches are thriving in the tank. I see them graze quite regularly on the rocks and gravel and they don't seem to have any issues with the shape of the tank.

Ok, so they've only been in there for 2 weeks, but there are no signs of aillments or either having any issues.

I'll keep you posted on any developments, but as of today all seems well.

And thanks to all of you for the comments/advice.

I've been into the pet store with this info and requested they send it to their head office for feedback. I doubt I'll get a response, but if I do I will be sure to post it up on this forum!

Just out of interest, how big is your tank? The biorbs I've seen are pretty small, and your goldfish need a good ten gallons apiece US. Shubunkins and comets will grow to a foot given the right conditions.

Carp and golden orfe are absolutely NOT tank fish. They need ponds. They are huge. If they were sold to you as suitable for an aquarium you have grounds for serious complaint. Please, please, please, take them back to the shop. Actually, take them to a different, more repsonsible shop and ask if they will rehome them for you.

I've got a four foot coldwater tank with three goldfish, two weather loach, a CAE (I know. I know) and eleven white clouds. It's overstocked, if anything, and I won;t be keeping the goldfish in it when they get big.

It's not your fault, some aquatics shops are enormously irresponsible, but if you care about your fish, you need to think about your tank...