Loaches Online Forum

Well its finally going to happen, I will be setting up my first river tank in the new year

I have a deep 2' tank that will hopefully become home to a trio of Sewellia and a trio of P. Cheni. With it only been a 2' tank I will be using a power head connected to river tank manifold and also an internal power filter with spray bar attached.

My main point of debate at the moment is what substrate to use?

I know Emma has black sand in her Sewellia tank and if I am correct Martin has gravel in his Cheni tank, Les did tell me what his substrate was but I have forgotten. What I was wondering is do the different species prefer a different substrate for breeding or is it purely personal preference?

Hi Mark,

We just use standard aquarium gravel in the current tank, 1.5-4mm at a guess. The Cheni don't seem to have any problem in diging in it.

For the next tank I'm considering a sand and gravel combination which i believe is similar to Martin's Sewellia tank. The current plan is to have gravel at the ends of the tank where flow will be at its strongest with sand in the middle. I'm sure that won't last for long though and it will all get mixed up eventually.

Welcome to the collective ;-)

Thanks Les, that's more or less what I was thinking of doing. I was going to cover the whole base with fine gravel with it slightly deeper at either end and leveling out the centre section with sand, like you say it probably wont last long and also I was hoping that the sand would stop detritus sinking down into the gravel as much as normal.

I have some moss balls on order which I will also try in the river tank and see how they do.

I am planning on getting the tank set up straight away in the new year and traveling through to Emma's in March to pick up some Sewellia or Cheni (or both ), this will give me time to hopefully remove some river shrimp form my pond filtration system and see if its possible for them to live and colonise a tank and hopefully be a natural source of food within the setup.