Loaches Online Forum

:D Congrats Adder. you have a beautiful cichlid tank, and i hope you will enjoy your new loach tank as much. its a common mitake to make, and im glad you did the responsible thing. may your loach addiction begin.....

Just in time as I might be getting transferred to another state....lol...Oh well ...

Alright I have the clowns moved in to their own tank with water conditions better suited to their needs.

MTS wrote:I notice you are in CA. Are you going to the cichlid convention in Sacramento?

Unfortunately not. My uncle is getting married at Pebble beach that weekend so we will all be up there.

Can't help any with the sump system. We use Eheim canisters and bio-wheel HOBs on our larger tanks. Something about drilling holes in an aquarium disturbs me. Clowns like current but I'm not sure the river tank manifold design is really as important for them as for the hillstream loaches. Martin ...

The only way I can see your idea working based on the drawing is if you have electric solenoid valves in both feed and return pipes that bias to shut in the event of a power failure. Problem there is if the intake solenoid fails the return will dump all the sump back to the tank and cause an ...

I did have another question. Instead of doing a manifold in the tank would it be just as good to drill the tank on both sides. Then run that to a wet/dry and then pump it back on the opposite end. I have already thought about the power failure senerio. I could place a float switch in my sump so my ...

I was thinking that someone who took as good care of those chiclids wasn't going to be happy about a compromise in either direction...

that's three pretty specialist set-ups you'll have :lol:

Thank you :) You are right. Thats why I will be placing the Clowns in their own tank and dealing with ...

Well I was able to watch them for a while and wow they are neat fish. They are all quite active spending their time picking through the sand and rocks for food. Once they come across snail they make short work of it (I have quite a few shells now on the bottom). They also go crazy during feeding ...

I suspect the cichlids can come down some in pH. I buy most of mine from Wet Thumb (www.wetthumbaquatics.com) where they are raised in 7.2 pH with a hardness of 240 ppm and a temperature of 80 degrees. If your tank is buffered by rock, it will be hard to lower the pH and you would want to do it ...

Hi Adder and welcome to LOL.
That's a very nice tank you have there and beautiful cichlids.
Your post is extremely informative which makes giving advice far easier for us.
Unfortunately, you should have come here and posted before getting your Clown Loaches. We would have directed you to this ...

The tangs that you listed prefer a pH of around 8.6. The clowns prefer a -pH of around 6.5-7.0. These fish really shouldn't be kept together.

OK the pH of the tap water here is 8.0. and my tank is 8.9. The LFS I got them from was at a pH of 8.0 as well. I did drip them for about an hour prior to ...

Hi all,
I added some Clown Loaches to my tank for some snail control and wanted some advise as far as any issues that I might have. They were added to a tank that has been established for three years (they are the first addition to the tank in over two years). The tank footprint is 60"X 18" X 24 ...