Loaches Online Forum

OK, so here I am, happily back at the office with my kuhli tank. (Yes, there are other fish, amphibians and inverts, but they're just extras on the set; the kuhlis are the celebrities.)

Arriving an hour early, I removed all but a small handful of the gravel and replaced it with white aquarium sand, dropping a few pieces of gravel around for viewing pleasure. (When it was down to almost bare bottom, I finally got to see all six kuhlis at once, for more than a few seconds!)

And now I've discovered, after tossing the gravel, that the Aqua Clear filters do not like sand. One tiny particle gets in the fan thingy and I have to go poking inside until the blades turn without that horrible scratching sound. Twice the motor then refused to even try, and I had to disassemble the entire thing.

Now that the sand seems to have settled (some of it was floating??) the filters are running fine. And a good thing, because the kuhlis reeeeealy like the sand

I also rinsed off and dropped in an Indian Almond leaf. It's floating around for now, but should eventually get waterlogged (waterleafed?) and settle to the floor.

you could try making a slice in one of those small aquaclear sponges and sliding it over your intake. Not only does it keep the sand out of the filter when the khulis get flipping around, but it creates a backup media sponge in case you ever need to set up a quarantine tank quickly.

I originally did have a piece of sponge over each intake, to prevent kuhlis from going up inside the filter, but it visibly slowed the flow through the filter. There's nylon netting over them now, but of course that doesn't do much about sand. Since there are two filters with a total of 300 gph on this 20L tank, I could probably sacrifice some filtration if it looks like it's going to be an problem.

Neither filter has ground to a halt again since the sand settled, but the kuhlis won't really get going until tonight. We'll see if both filters are still functioning by morning.

A canister filter would be perfect, but I can't justify the expense ...