Loaches Online Forum

Hello, since many of the people here have loaches, I was also wondering if anyone keeps any type of gourami with the loaches as well. I have a planted 30 gallon tank with:

1 pearl gourami
6 harlequin rasboras
10 dwarf loaches

Initially my pearl gourami became a very benign king of the tank. However I noticed that the flow coming out of the spray bar of my Eheim 2215 canister filter was very low and there was not much water movement through the tank. I cleaned and raised the elevation of the filter in addition to pruning the plants in front of the spray bar.

This increased the flow and water movement. Both my rasboras and loaches became happier, as the rasboras swam out into the open a lot more and the loaches ate all of my pond snails. The gourami however is now hiding in the back corner of my tank underneath the spray bar and does not eat nearly as much as it used to. I was wondering if any of you have had success keeping gourami in high or medium flow tanks and could help me out. Thanks.

Gouramis are low flow fish. They do not have the streamlined figure that it takes to handle fast moving water. The only way to keep both groups happy is with enough decorations near the surface that the Gouramis will have some calmer areas. They are surface oriented fish.
I do have several tanks with Loaches and Gouramis.
The tanks are planted, and have rocks and driftwood. There are powerheads in the tanks, generally aimed rather low and along the front (Loach territory) and the filter most often in centered at the back (spray bar, spillway or point source) so that the upper corners of the tanks have the least water movement.

I have two pearl gouramis with my 6 clown loach with no problem (so far). I couldn't use the spray bar as the Gs really hated it so now use the filter outlet pipe slightly out of the water on full power. It causes enough of a current for the others to play surfing but there are also still-water areas in the tank and all seem happy. I run a Fluval external filter pump and the juwel internal one with both outlets quite close to each other. Hope this helps.