Loaches Online Forum

That's something I've never seen before. Who would of thunk it? Excellent video too!

chefkeith wrote:That's something I've never seen before. Who would of thunk it? Excellent video too!

I really didn't know what they would do,, i had some left over corn on the cob and i give those to my bird. She loves them,, as i was giving her one I was like what the hell "do loaches like corn?"

ha ha, well yes they do:) It took them a couple of hours, but it is gone. The clown loaches were hiding, but I did catch some of my 7" s out eating on it,, I dont think the pictures came out very well, I still have to look at them. If they are decent ill post them.

That's really funny. I felt kinda sorry for the rainbows, looked liked they wanted to try it too. I've heard people give corn to plecos, maybe my loaches need to try some.

I love DIY projects. What a great thread.

Cup wrote:I love DIY projects. What a great thread.

Thanks Cup,, I did some Google research and just tried it out. So far it has been wonderful and the fish are just doing great. I love the tank and the filter/sump combo is working like a champ.

I know there are not too many DYI threads out there and I wanted to document my success or failure Mostly for the simple reason to be a lesson for anyone who came after me.. definitely don't do what OneWay did! he he

I was up early this morning due to allergies, 4am to be exact, and was treated to seeing my shoal of clown loaches out feeding.

I use blue sting lights for "moon light" and it looks great. The visibility was good and the fish seemed quite happy. My larger clowns are out in the morning. It was nice to see them schooling/feeding this morning. It also gave me a good chance to count their numbers

I have two clowns ~7", four ~6", three that are ~5". These are my larger clowns are they are basically active from 3-4am until about noon then they seem to sleep from noon till past 2am. The rest of my smaller clown loaches are active all day, but not at night. I will attempt to take some night pictures if i ever get a chance.

I noticed that the "grayed" dominant female was really noticeable at night, the difference was striking when compared to the "day" lights.

anyway, just an early morning observation

A short video taken with my phone to show my clowns out and about!

If i went up stairs to get my camera they would have scattered

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR3UFCa4HQE


I can count 12 of the 13 in the tank and the quality is not too bad for a phone.

Enjoy!

I know i have not documented my loaches lately... so I took a video with my phone real fast during feeding after work today.


The quality is not the best, but you can see my clowns very nicely. My other loaches are hard to make out beyond smaller fish shapes

CLICK ME-->Loach tank after 8 months

Enjoy,

Fred aka OneWay

Your tank is looking good.

Keith Wolcott wrote:Your tank is looking good.

Thank you Keith.

The larger loaches are filling out nicely, but I do have some smaller ones that just will not grow. They are not skinny, but they just have
been left behind by other tank mates of the same species.


Here is my latest find. I have had this little guy for several months now and he is about 3" long now. I love his 2 saddle stripes.
They do not have Ich; it is just the glass. I cleaned it after these photos, but wanted to share him while I had him/her out in the open on film.

You can see the assortment of loaches in there... just don't mind the random red tailed nor the kribby

Video from a late night feeding. The largest loaches are too fat and lazy to come out and feed so the littles guys are out getting a snack.

The oddballs are the kribensis and synodontis eruptus. The background noises are my parrot, just a couple of grrr noises and whistles

Late Night feeding
things to note:
* @2:25 One clown had a faded black spot appear this summer on its flank. I thought it was something wrong until I realized it was on symmetrical on both sides of the fish.

*The 2 darios are the same age or at least bought at the same time and were the same size. parasites or just variation? small @1:45 , the large one @2:38.

*Grayed out loach. My alpha is grayed out, but recently a mid-sized loach is grayed as well. The bronze coloration does not show all that well in the video, but it is really cool looking in person.

*@1:13 and 2:53 a runt clown loach has not grown since I got him, but 4 stripes has grown 5x as much in the same time frame. He is down in the corner and hard to see in the published clip. He is only about 1.5" and not emaciated, but still not growing.

Hi Oneway . love those Darios

piggy4 wrote:Hi Oneway . love those Darios

Yes the large one is 5-6" and is one of my favorite loaches. A better quality video of feeding time.. shrimp and cucumber

many loaches

for reference the piece of cucumber is almost 2"

I updated my tank water prep auto fill.

I replaced my 45g trash can with a 50g rain barrel to collect my peat filter water.



And since it already had a 3/8" hose coming out of it, I just reduced it down to 1/4" hose and attached it to my top off float.



This is pretty slick and I feel better when i am out of town. My wife does not have to worry as much to keep the sump topped off.

I got a new camera and took some pictures to show what changes i made to the DYI filter/sump over the last year.

I replaced the clear water containers with opaque 3 gallon buckets. The buckets have more bioball capacity and they keep the bacteria in the dark better. I kept the nozzles from the water container and used that as a spout for these buckets.

From inside of the sump


From outside of the sump


One of the thing I recently changed was how I prevented plants, snails, fish, and debris from overflowing in with the return pumps... they tend to die or it is a pain in the but to keep fishing them out of there.

Here is a shot of that over flow gap


I have used cut sponges for the last 3 years, 2 sets that I rotate. They work fine, but clog very quickly, so you have to rinse them out every 2 days or else the water flows over the top of them defeating the purpose.


This is the most labor intensive part of the tank maintenance and it is just plain annoying. I thought there has to be a better way.. I would love to fabricate a biowheel manifold someday, but this is what i came up with using some left over scraps.

I used a thin sheet of poly, roughly 10"x10" in size, then using a butane torch heated it so it could bent after which holes were drilled int it.


piece #1


#1 in place


Piece #2, cut out for water line/float


#2 in place


The torch, handy and cheap