Loaches Online Forum

This friday, i plan on buying some more loaches. They will be going into an aquarium that has lots of live plants. I will most likely have the choice between for which i want to add.
Khuli loaches
Kubotai loaches
dwarf chained loaches
I know for a fact that the khulis will not eat or tear up the plants but will the kubotai or sidthimunki destroy plants? I also have a ton of malaysian trumpet snails, so it would be nice to get either the kubotai or sidthimunki loaches.

Kubotais will help with your snail problem, but they're the only ones that get relatively large out of those options. I keep Sids and kuhlis together, and neither nibble the plants.

Mark in Vancouver wrote:I keep Sids and kuhlis together, and neither nibble the plants.

You do? I thought you didn't keep fish anymore..... Don't mean to hijack this thread, but you need to show me your tank!

As for this thread, kuhli's would be good. Does anyone know the specific flow requirements of sids?

Oh, and if you're worried about plant-nibbling fish, be wary of certain barb species. They'll destroy your tank!

I have kubotais and clowns, and I haven't had any problems. I have only Cryptocoryne, which are quite sturdy, so I don't know with fine-leaved plants. They do like veggies and algae wafers.

My Kubotai punch holes in sword plants but leave everything else alone.

I have all three in planted tanks with no issues.
MTS have very hard shells. Some Loaches learn to suck out the meat, but biting and breaking the shell does not seem to work. I think my kubotai have figured this out.
Kuhlies might not be great at snails. IME they seem to eat the babies, though. I have adult pond nails in their tank, but rarely see small snails.
My sids are a bit young to be snail hunters. At last sight they had grown to a little over an inch. (Tank is heavily planted, and the fish can be hidden for a long time) However, I have not seen pond snails in that tank in a while, perhaps they are getting started on the young snails.

my sids are in a very planted tank and I wouldn't trade them. I posted a pic of the tank and a little about them here. I'm not sure if they're the cause of my uprooted glossostigma or if it was really the SAEs, but it's not worth the risk of wasting more money on it. They also just recently started biting holes in the sword plants and giant hygrophila, but I don't really care that much - those plants grow fast. I'm starting to feed more veggies to see if it gets them to stop.

my sids love snails - mts, pond, whatever. If it's a big one, they'll work as a team. The substrate is littered with shells.

From what I understand based on the profile here, they come from habitats with a varying amount of current. My tank has what I'd consider medium current. Occasionally I find them playing in the higher current areas, but not a lot.

I'm waiting for my yoyos to chow down on the snails that abound in their tank. My other tank has been picked clean by the clowns so I take from the yoyo tank and put in the clown tank.

I should set up a small, snail only, planted tank and use those to feed my loaches... fun!