Loaches Online Forum

Thanks Bas.

I thought they have some sort of organic molecule attached, mainly because I was reading once for humans that there's a difference how we process organic and non-organic minerals.

So what is your opinion on adding nitrates in a loach tank? Am I possibly stressing the fish? I am not adding much as it's a low tech, maybe 3-4ppm at a time.

I never added anything to the water what is intended to improuve the plantgrowth. Phosphorus? Nope Nitrate ? Nope Iron? Nope

I keep fish, feed the fish and the fish will excrete the feed - resulting in sufficient fertelizer in my eyes.

@ organic, inorganic compounds

for most minerals you are right. Iron, for instance, is best eaten together with a heame group. We use iron to transport oxygen, or store oxygen, and this iron is used in a protein, called heamoglobulin for transport and myoglobulin for storage. In both cases the iron is hold in a certain place in the protein, but further surrounded by an organic molecule, haeme.

Luckily, other mammals have the same heame in their body, so eating steak we get the iron in the most available form. This is procvessed over 100 times easier then if we would eat an iron rod.

But nitrate (which we, humans, don't need) is never bound to a protein or an organic compound.

Nitrate, NO3, can exchange an O for an organic molecule, such as CH3-NO2, but I think this compund would be named in nitromethane - It's been a while since I learned naming compunds, and I forgot most of it

R-NO2 (without any + or -) reacts way different from NO3- - hence the different name

Yes, I'd love to get away without anything but it's not the case in this tank. I particularly have issues with no nitrates,potassium and iron deficiencies. I don't need to dose any micros, they seem to be replaced with water changes.
Adding the others get my plants back growing but I really don't want fish to be affected if it does because I only have a few plants, not really a planted tank. The only reason I want the plant growth back is because the fish do like browsing amongst them. I use dry ferts and dose the water directly with powder so sometimes I may overdo it a bit.
With clown loaches its hard to figure long term effect of anything because one needs to wait like 20 years and you kind of get one shot at it.

Got a very poor video of Mr New Loach who's been with me for maybe a year and a half already.
It's probably best watched full screen as I took it with lights off and camera is horrible. He's sitting on his tail in the left corner mostly. staring at the "sky" , he loves squeezing himself there but will appear middle video in full length. I think he's grown again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6BinBdh5zU

A picture from today. He's obviously the "big" one

Nice fish!

Looking great! I see the differnce between now and 1,5 years back. Fun to see a fish develop like this. Thanks for sharing

He's filling out a lot. On this picture he looks a bit overweight. I actually fed them lots of frozen stuff recently. I must reduce that

A couple more pics of the clown with the lights on from today. He looks smaller on pics than he actually is, maybe because I can't get him when staying still and straight.

Hey, took a video today of my smaller clowns dancing. They act spooked from time to time because there's a sofa next to the tank and the dog was jumping up and down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii1WbNxpMD8

And this is a video of my big clown loach below. He came out for a loach dance on the glass accompanied by my second biggest and one of my smallest clown loaches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IENzzj ... e=youtu.be

Wow, can't believe its been 3 years since I opened this first. My clownies went through a lot since. That tank broke and the tank I moved them to broke too a year later. My clowns now live in an indoor heavy duty plastic pond. No more clear pictures and videos

Anyway, the big loach this thread was opened for is doing well. He's larger/longer than what he was but its hard to tell how large as I never bothered measuring him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VlEFqjmuGQ

And a closer view of the "big guy". He came over the say hello and the camera got a good enough angle on him from above to see the size. He's grown lots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9nVkoAOLHw

I like you clown pond! A cool new way of observing them.

Thanks Nancy.

Someone did tell me clown loaches are tank busters. But mine literally busted two glass tanks so now they got a Rubbermaid pond

The black sides of the tank actually doesn't make the clowns spooky and it feels to me I see a lot more of them this way. They love it too. They've been very playful since moved to this tank.