Loaches Online Forum

Are you sure the water softening pillow wouldn't help? If You mean: ion-exchange resin - yes. But not used in the tank, but by filtering water before adding it to aquarium. And You have to know that to regenerate it, You need... acids - You were afraid of using them. To be honest - the simplest and...

@ Kuhil , I don't want to try explaining it very precisely, because the specialistic language will be necessary in that situation. English is not my first language, so I don't want to mislead You because of some vocabulary mistake. But that topic is so popular and there's no difficulty in finding so...

Bas Pels, with all due respect, trying to acidify such buffered water with tannins from some extracts is innefective. The KH buffer must be about 6n while pH being at tha value. To acidify such a water effectively we firstly have to lower the buffer.

Kuhli wrote: And the ph? Shall I add some IAL/bark to the tank to lower it?

Leaves and bark won't do much with values like that. You firstly have to lower KH with mineral acids (hydrochloric or sulfuric) and than acidify water with tannins.

I would also reccomend lowering pH - value in Your aquarium is the next stressful factor. Pangios comes from habitats with many natural acids, even from blackwater. 7,6 is definitely too high for them.

Yep, it happens to kuhlis quite often, but IMO we can do a lot to prevent that. First thing is stress - those fishes are very shy. Of course we can't do much while transporting them, but then - of course we can. The most important factor are places to hide in aquarium. I can't see Your tank so it is...

Hello Tarkus. It would be very helpful if You show a photo of this tank - most problems with shy loaches come from too low amount of places to hide and a bad placement of them. Paradoxically the more hideouts You give them, the less time they will spend in those places

Hey, IMO there's no big difference between spawning them and the other Botiidae loaches. The reason why we can read about some spawnings of Clowns or Sids is the fact, that those are just more common - so there's obviously a bigger chance to spawn them. Firstly: You have to prepare a really huge tan...

Hello, After buying pretty Green Tiger Loaches some time ago, i didn't even think that it could be something other than S. hymenophysa - here in Poland availabiliy of loaches is really poor, and buying hymenophysas is such a success. But. My tigers don't really looks like a typical hymenophysa. Thei...

I've seen 10, 15, 20, and 30 gallons listed on the internet. Which is it? That's bad idea to talk about gallons/litres when debating about tank size requirements for loaches. The only important issue are base dimensions. For example You can have a tank 60x30x20 centimeters and that's 9,5 US gallons...

Haha, so that's great!

To give You a lil' consolation I can say, that here in Poland I've never seen any sinibotia - even robusta! That shows how rich selections of loaches we've got here. From one month i'm searching for some striatas - without any effect

I have to say that - if you want to keep those Sinibotias with clowns (as I can read in Your signature, You currently keep them), You should think it over, cause their temperature requirements are completely different.

Yep, i would also reccomend some smaller species, cause Your tank is a little bit narrow for giants like Yoyos. I will consider kubotais or histrionicas - they can give you a lot of fun :) Zebras, and Queen botias will also suit this tank, but as i observed, those are not as crazy and ubiquitous as ...

Hi, if you want species with behaviours smilar to clowns, You should choose some other Botidae loaches. Especially from genus Botia. It will be helpful when You tell something about dimensions of Your tank.

Hey, just upload photo to some hosting service and give the link here. It's as easy as pie.