Loaches Online Forum

Hi there,

I'm in the process of shutting down my 4 foot Mbuna tank to change to a fast flowing hillstream one. I intend to shamelessly copy the river manifold system described on the Loaches online site. However, I'm stuck on a few details and would appreciate some help.
I've read every article on the main site, and have tried to search for similar posts here before asking, but there are simply too many to read.

As I've said my tank is 4 foot and approx 240L. I intend to keep some kind of hillstream loach, a main shoal of danios/devarios and, hopefully, one or two slightly larger show fish.

My questions are:

1) How many loaches in a tank of this size?
2) What are the best/prettiest/most interesting fish that are commonly available to keep as my main shoal?
3) What other fish are commonly available for this kind of tank to act as larger show fish?

Thanks for any help. I feel like I need it. If there are any obvious pointers I should know about feel free to throw them at me!

Cheers, Phill

Hi Phil,
As for species it will depend mostly on where you are and what's available in your area.
In my limited experience, the biggest factor in stocking hillstreams like gastromyzons and sewellias is the ammount of surfaces(rocks, bogwood, and such) that you have with healthy, mature algae for them to graze on. I've had limited success getting them to switch over to other foods. I'd suggest letting the tank mature for a good while before introducing these species.

Phil,
4' with current will have lots of eddies and refuges already, but if you design/engineer/build in a few more you should be able to introduce just about anything- even angels seem to appreciate a bit of flow. Hillstreams, lizards and Botia aside, I think you'd be surprised how well even Pagio do in a good flow. That little muscular snake-body is made to sneak between cobbles in the river riffle.
I agree with Plaalye, that for anything that eats algae/bacterial films and detritus you need to let the tank age-up a bit. Put in old leaves and wood and snails to accelerate that process.
A

Thanks for those replies. I was thinking of waiting around 6 months before adding sewellias. But was hoping to add around 8 - 10 of them. Would that be okay?

I mis-spoke a bit there in my first post. My sewellias have actually been pretty good at eating bloodworms, carnivore pellets, etc. It's the gatromyzons I've had difficulty with. I would think 8-10 would be fine but I'm fairly new at this, you'll likely get more experienced advice. You might add 4 or 5 at a time instead of all at once to see how things go. Have a look at the schistura species as well, I love my s. balteata.

I would definately take my time adding hillstreams so that some algae gets built up. I would also add the sewellias a few at a time. One thing I have found about sewellias is that they can be a bit territorial so make sure they have plenty of room .