Loaches Online Forum

Hi. I am new to this forum and to keeping loaches. I'd be grateful for any advice you can give on the set up and care for my 4 loaches.

My tank is a 30 gallon long, I have an AquaClear 50 filter and an AquaClear 50 powerhead on one end of the tank and a sponge filter for an 80 gallon tank on the other end. Is this sufficient water turnover for my fish?

I have many rocks, wood, and a few live plants. The 4 loaches quickly consumed all the visible algae in my tank. I've been adding rocks from my other tank to provide additional algae, but I'm not sure if they have enough. I've also been dropping in various sinking wafers each day, but I'm not sure if they are eating any of it. Any suggestions on food that they typically love?

What indicators might tell me that they are happy? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

That sounds like enough for the sewellias. I keep my group of 5 in a 23 gallon tank with a Eheim 2215 canister and a 425 GPH powerhead. How much watts does your tank have? You may need to add more lighting to grow the algae. I first started out having low lighting and would grow algae in a separate tank/container like you were doing but when I added more lighting and some ferts to make the algae grow in the tank itself, the loaches looked to be happier as there was more algae to graze on and stopped me from bothering the fish with putting in new rocks. That made them happy and they now breed twice a week .

I feed mine frozen bloodworms, mysis shrimp, Repashy soilent green, and veggies like zucchini. They prefer the Repashy over the other foods. In my experience, all the wild fish I kept, loved the Repashy food so it was easy to feed them with that as they wouldn't eat other foods I tried to give them. Not sure if others are the same but my loaches love grazing on the leaves of my java ferns and crypt. I think they just like grazing on big leaves.

Thank you so much! I have a 36" 21W Nova Flourescent Grow lamp and an LED light that I don't know what it provides for the moment. I'll find out. My tank is in my kitchen where I have flourescent lighting on almost all day. I'll look into locating some fertilizer and Repashy.