Loaches Online Forum

Hi,

I was wondering what the pH parameter range is for clown loaches and yoyo loaches to survive and thrive in?

The tank pH the last time I measured was 6.8 and when I tested again today, the pH has gone down to 6.4....have not added any fish during the past few weeks, but I did add some new plants yesterday (a bunch of thin and giant vals).

Is a pH of 6.4 too low for the loaches? Or is it a matter of the fish getting used to their environment?

Thanks

Hi ey,

Your pH is absolutely fine, as long as it's stable. Our Clown aquarium has a pH that is a lot lower than that, and has been for a long time now.

If your pH is significantly different to the pH of the water at your preferred LFS, you do have to be very careful when acclimatising new purchases to your aquarium.

Emma

Ph 6.4 is fine and easily within the range that they would encounter in there natural habitats - in fact I would think 6.4 was probably just about perfect, although hopefully someone else can confirm this.

Whatever level it is at, the key is to keep the ph stable as possible. It only usually presents a problem for the fish when there are rapid swings over a short period of time - and remember the ph scale is logarithmic.
If you are having trouble with falling ph, you need to buffer it by increasing the Kh a little. Additives for this are commercially availible. Alternatively, try increasing the airation / surface agitation - this will drive off CO2, which is acidic, thereby preventing any further drop in ph.

And theres the confirmation! God im a slow typist

Emma Turner wrote: If your pH is significantly different to the pH of the water at your preferred LFS, you do have to be very careful when acclimatising new purchases to your aquarium.

Perhaps the following episode from my disaster collection would be of interest.

As was discovered too late, a system in a local store dropped Ph below 6. Since the drop apparently happened gradually, the store did not notice the problem for a while -- the fish was doing fine (and this included clowns which I was told do not feed below 6). However, every fish they sold died.---nobody could acclimate them.

(My protection against this kind of thing is to check Ph in the bag before acclimating. Doing this saved me a few hillstreams last time -- while the store system was supposed to be 6.8 it actually measured 7.4, and with one hour acclimation to my 6.4 in that tank, I would have killed the fish. I had to acclimate in a bucket with a temp airstone for four hours...)

Let me confirm that 6.4 is perfectly fine, as long as you don't play with short-term remedies to raise it which will just make it unstable (no PhUp stuff). The best approach is a powerful airstone, which gave me a bump from 6.4 to 6.8 and also gave a vertical current some loaches like. A bag of crashed corals is another good approach (but it needs to be replaced every few months).

hth

mikev wrote:this included clowns which I was told do not feed below 6

What rubbish! Take anything this store says with a pinch of salt.

You can tell them that we've been keeping our Clowns in water that is well below pH 5 (and with a general hardness of 4 degrees) for quite some time, and they are in excellent health and have perfectly good healthy appetites!

Some Clown Loach populations are found in blackwater conditions where the water is very soft and acidic. However, we wouldn't recommend anyone new to the hobby try to replicate these conditions, as we have been very careful and have let our pH level drop very gradually over the last 18 months. We have a digital pH meter which allows us to keep a very close eye on things - much more accurate than a lot of test kits on the market.

We don't plan on adding any more fish to our Clown aquarium, so acclimatising new fish is not going to pose a problem.

Emma

Emma Turner wrote:

mikev wrote:this included clowns which I was told do not feed below 6

What rubbish! Take anything this store says with a pinch of salt.

Good to know this, thanks, Emma.

mikev wrote:(My protection against this kind of thing is to check Ph in the bag before acclimating. Doing this saved me a few hillstreams last time -- while the store system was supposed to be 6.8 it actually measured 7.4, and with one hour acclimation to my 6.4 in that tank, I would have killed the fish. I had to acclimate in a bucket with a temp airstone for four hours...)

I also check the pH of the water in the bag, before I start acclimating

Mainly because I have strange water - pH 7.6-8.0, but VERY soft (less than 12 ppm) from the tap; 7.4 and 40-50ppm in the tank thanks to water conditioning crystals and driftwood... and daily/every 2nd day water changes to avoid any "crash".
Often water in the bag from the LFS tests at 6.4 - So you can imagine the time it takes to acclimate

Emma Turner wrote:

mikev wrote:this included clowns which I was told do not feed below 6

What rubbish! Take anything this store says with a pinch of salt.

Very funny, Emma.

I was going to say that I have no intention of ever keeping loaches at below 6, but it turned out I was doing exactly this.

Somehow my buffering crashed, pH went down beyond the test, but the loaches ate just fine, and looked quite happy. It is the nitrifying bacteria that refused to eat....

I got it happy now but this one was a close call.

(Incidentally, the only reason I checked the ammonia --- I check every couple of weeks only -- was the unusual clown behavior. My clowns, unlike yours are *morning* fish. Seeing all of them coming out at night and asking for food was abnormal.

If you have any idea why my clowns are morning, it would be interesting. I always see them all from the early morning till maybe 2pm, then the larger ones dissappear for the night and would not even attend the evening meal. The smaller three, rarely four, do stay out until dark.

)

i was told that adding drift would to your tank would lower your ph levels


hey emma where did you get a digatel ph reader ?????


i would love to get one

Please see your other thread for my answer to your question:
http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=1664

Emma