Loaches Online Forum

Hi all,
My 20L rivertank is going on 5 months old now. The rocks have become dark reddish,brown,green with algae. My hillies, 2 sewellia and 3 gastromyzon, used to spend all there time on the 2 big flat rocks directly in front of the powerhead, fighting for position grazing on algae. Lately it's changed, they spend very little time there. It crossed my mind that maybe the algae had gotten old and is no longer tasty? So I took a razorblade and scraped off a few spots and sure enough, the next day they were parked on those spots. Another thought was that maybe it had become too slippery for them to hold on?

Do any of you clean your rocks? If so, how frequently and to what extent?

That's interesting. I'll have to give that a try.

a rounded stone just flip over and allow new algae growth to form.

^^ That was my first thought also and I did flip some of the smaller rocks, but the 2 big flat ones only fit together the way they are.
Yesterday I scraped a few swaths form the carpet of algae on the back of the glass and when I came home tonight everyone was there, even the amanos! They obviously like new growth.

I never clean rocks or other substrates in a tank.

Sometimes I collect rocks or other substrates from natural habitats with all the biofilm on and put these things in the hillstream loaches tanks.

Gerhard