Need some stocking advice for my second loach tank

[Bas Pels]

Personally I feed my fishes 5 or 6 days a week. I think that is better for them.

Now I don't know whether ploaches need to be feed more often a day, but to me, 4 feedings a day seems a bit much. Mind you, I work from home, I could feed them 6 times a day should I want to, but I don't

[NancyD]

I do not feed tubifex in any form, they are grown in sewage (yuck). My loaches & other fish never liked mysis or krill much. I don't know why, but they didn't & I had to vacuum them out. I used to make a "seafood blend" when I had juvinile discus...A mixture of clams, scallops, shrimp, fin fish of many kinds & mussels etc., a few veggies & a bit of vitamins too. Blackworms &/or bloodworms were good. My discus would eat beefheart mixed with other stuff, but they were the only 1s that went crazy over it...loaches not so much, just a few nibbles. I don't think I ever offered squid...Haven't I said this before?

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Concerning amounts, I'm basing 4x a day off of a principle that the less food eaten at once, the faster and more efficient digestion will be for pet fish. I heard this at a local aquarium club, and it does make sense.
The actual amount of food given in a day won't increase from if they were fed, say, 2-3 times a week. Just the frequency of feeding smaller portions, although the occasional fast day is something I would probably do (my existing tanks get them).

Nancy, it seems like your experience is testament to the Loach Almanac's analogy on different individuals of a given fish liking different foods.

Don’t forget that some people like curry but not pizzas, yet other people may like pizzas but not curry.

Every single fish which I feed krill or mysis snaps it up, it could be because I have raised them on pellets containing krill and other crustaceans as non-minor ingredients, so they have a taste for it.

I have heard of the potential risks of tubifex worms, which is why I don't feed live. The sterilization process in the following brand that I feed seems to have worked, because there have been no problems so far with any fish that have eaten these:
https://www.hikariusa.com/frozen_folder ... cubes.html

Making blends (which I may have mentioned before in another thread) is not an option for me on the basis of having tried it before but having it not be OK with my cousin.
That's fine by me. I personally like my fish to be able to experience each type of food in its whole form, as it provides variety/enrichment.

Would love to give my fish blackworms but I haven't been able to find any for sale. I'm not so comfortable with beefheart, not only are mammal/bird meats not good for fish, it can make a 'beef soup' of water: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/foru ... st-8071124
I'll grant that I've never had discus though.

I would never have offered squid were it not for the fact that I happened to have some and wondered whether or not the loaches would like it. For sure, it's pretty uncommonly offered.

You may have said this before to someone else on another thread. This is the first time we're discussing these foods, but going through this site, I can see a number of similar comments you have made before I was a member.

[NancyD]

I feed fry/juveniles much more often than adult fish. Your idea of small more frequent meals is ok but 4x/day seems excessive for (almost) adult fish. More food = more poo = more water changes needed. I'm lazy, I will WC once/week & adjust feeding to fit that schedule in keeping with stable parameters for adult fish, younger fish will benefit from more feedings & WCs...but it gets tiresome as fish grow. They don't "need" it to be healthy...& like with people, obesity is not a good thing. Some fish just like to eat as often as they can, lol...I would cut back on feeding so often as your loaches grow. There's no reason to feed more than 2x/day for even the most spoiled (near) adult fish. Lots of food does not = good care. You & your fish may be learning bad habits. Food does not = love, it = poop & pollution...but water changes just might, lol...

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Yes, more food does mean more poop and dirtier water. Which is why as mentioned, even these 4 meals aren't going to amount to any more, altogether, than say your 2x a day schedule would.

Example: Suppose a 2x a day schedule for this fish tank that would give them the appropriate amount of food is giving them as much as they could eat in a minute at each feeding. The 4x a day feeding schedule would only have its feedings include enough food to be eaten in 30 seconds, therefore coming out to the exact same amount of food fed and not dirtying the water or causing obesity any more than 2x a day.

As for water replacements. Based on advice from Monster Fishkeepers, I do mine 3x a week and >100% of the tank volume total from those 3 to keep the NO3 at 5 mg/l or less.

[NancyD]

Your 30 second feedings may not allow more shy, smaller or slower species or individuals to get as much food as faster, often larger, more agressive fish. I've also had greedy fish "stash" food they couldn't eat & guard it from others. Watch for those issues.

Your water change schedule is an admirable goal. But your math of 1/3 3x/week doesn't really = 100% nitrate reduction. I think it may have been chefkeith that posted an interesting math article on dilution. It may have been too long ago to be easy to find or have the links still work. But the gist is if you change x amount of water, feed for x # of days, then do the same WC amount, then repeat. It can never = 100% & eventually nitrate will climb by some amount. So you may want to test once in for a while to see what actually happens in YOUR tank with your fish, feeding & WC schedules. & nitrate is only the cheap easy water parameter we as hobbyists can test for, there may be other things building up depending on your water source, feeding, etc. So many variables!!

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

The aggressive feeders is something I hadn't considered. Thanks for the heads up, it's a very good reason not to do too small too often.
I now am leaning more towards, say 2x a day for a minute.

You're right about the NO3 not being 0 even with those replacements, and Cheifkeith's math is indeed correct. But based on existing tanks, this schedule does the trick for <5 NO3.

[NancyD]

There's no 1 "right" answer, every tank can be very different as we know. Go slow to see what works for your tank & fish & adjust as needed. Base it on your fish's growth, eating habits, water changes...you know, everything!! Test what you can to get a good idea of what's happening in your tank at the moment....& then test again later. That's really the only way to know beyond subjective observations...but those have value too...but lesser in some ways. We tend to see what we'd "like" to see whether it's health of our fish, feeding etc. Well, really everything can be clouded by expectations. Go with the facts! & check! Many things can change, you need to adapt to those changes as they occur...& they will change...

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Forgot to put these, but here are some pictures of the black kuhlis.
I have high hopes for this tank to do a good job mixing the Botia with the kuhlis. If only Emma and Martin could know about this setup....

[NancyD]

Cute! The kuhlis seem smallish & skinny, feed them up!

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Being worked on as we speak!
They certainly pig out enough on pellets to be fattened up with a few extra helpings here and there (with appropriate attention given to water quality of course).

[NancyD]

Good show, keep the pics coming!

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Here's some more.



And here is a 2/3 grown kuhli loach next to one of the non-permanent pictus catfish growouts.


Also some water flow updates.
Just did a wee bit of experimentation with the Sicce Voyager and found a way to include at least 1 of the 2 I bought into this tank, instead of just having the XStream like I thought I might have to do earlier.
By twisting the ring nut to partway cover the holes, dead spots at the bottom are retained while still gaining the extra 6000 lph (and hopefully 12000 lph, if I can get it to work with both) of flow. Indicators for dead spots were the calm water kuhli loaches, as they did not appear phased by it (still every bit as active as in a low flow tank, instead of hiding from the flow).

Plus, just today I found a thread where Emma may have had an opinion that a calm and flowing setup like this wouldn't keep the kuhlis happy: viewtopic.php?p=131515#p131515

The thing is, I'm not sure whether she meant just a 'normal' flow setup with decor arranged to make calm spots, or a tank setup like this one which is specially designed to have distinct, decent sized areas of fast and slow water that go far beyond decor.
If she meant the former I'd agree with her. But if it was the latter, her opinion really doesn't seem to hold up (at least for this tank) based on how active and unphased the kuhlis are.

Although, she does seem to have had setups with the distinct flow and calm setup and had it work: viewtopic.php?p=47884#p47884

I just get more and more curious with each update what Emma would think, as somewhat alluded to in the previous comment.

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Forgot to add this, but last Wednesday I picked up the roseline sharks and striped kuhli loaches.

Here are the roselines in my tank, stil settling in. Color ought to improve when they do.


No pictures of the striped kuhlis I bought until I move them to this tank because the quarantine tank is too ugly to photograph. But I have pictures of the pet store's kuhli tank I bought them from.


The roselines also seem to be having a considerable dither fish effect for the black kuhlis. After they went in the tank, the kuhlis became several times as active as they were before this was the case.
Currently there are >12 black kuhlis out and active at any one time (you can see quite a few in picture 1), as opposed to the previous 2-4, and hopefully this will carry on to the striped kuhlis and Botia. To anyone who has black kuhlis in an appropriately large tank, I highly recommend roseline sharks as dithers.

More pics and stories here: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/foru ... st-8447721

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Everything is going very nicely so far. The biggest surprise is how well the kuhlis are doing at the 21-22 Celsius temperatures at which the tank is set.
I decided to try them at that temperature after reading Seriously Fish recommended it, mostly to ensure as high dissolved oxygen as possible. My judge for how it's working is their activity and appetite, neither of which changed at all from 27ish Celsius temperatures. No whitespot either!

One final bonus is that this saves a good deal of electricity compared to heating the tank to 25.5-28 Celsius as per the species profiles here!