New loach tank

[SnArL]

So, I just bought a 125 gallon tank for the formal dining room, specifically for loaches. Two of my other tanks have Gold Dojos (I bought them just knowing that they were bottom dwellers, but nothing else) and after seeing their personalities in action, I wanted to build a tank around loaches.

We were initially going to go with clowns, but the dimensions of the tank (72"x 18" x 24") means that the tank isn't wide enough for fully grown clowns. Also, we don't want loaches that will run and hide whenever somebody comes in the room (which is right by the front door). We're going to get YoYos, instead.

Right now, we're fishless cycling the tank with live plants (yet another good reason to wait...we want the plants to get rooted really well so it's harder for the loaches to dig them up), but in a few days, we'll be ready to fish cycle it with the tank mates.

We need suggestions for tank mates for the YoYos. Here's the restrictions that my wife has made:
No fish that we already have. We have:

• Mollies
  Platies
  Guppies
  White Clouds
  Gold Dojos
  Gouramis
  Betta

Also, no Tetras...they lasted about a week in the living room tank.
The tankmates need to be comfortable at the same temperature range as the YoYos. We had considered Comet Goldfish, but they like lower temperatures and the overlap was so narrow that we don't feel comfortable trying to keep the tank temperature in that narrow of a range.

We need something that the YoYo loaches won't annoy to death (my silver molly actually killed my first gourami by picking on him until he died of shame), but won't attack them; something fun to watch (like a schooling fish). Any suggestions?

[bookpage]

Welcome to the forum, SnArL. Try some of the barbs. I have 15 Odessa barbs in my new tank and they get along real well with all my loaches. Some barbs are not a mean as others; like Tiger Barbs. Give them a try.

[mattyd]

Danios: the larger Giant Danio, or leopard / zebra danios.
Rainbow fish: either Australian rainbow fish (there are soooo many varieties), or the New Guinea/Asian Rainbow fish (again, lots of varieties)

[SnArL]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll research those species. We're looking for something hearty that will survive the fish-in tank seasoning cycle.

[plaalye]

Have you read this?
http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16737

Adding your dithers before the tank is truly cycled is a bad idea IMO.

[DainBramage1991]

I'm particularly fond of my 6 Australian Rainbows, and they get along well with the loaches. They also deal well with the current coming out of the powerheads, which is something to consider when using a river tank type manifold setup.

[SnArL]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. We decided to go with the Giant Danios.

We've spent the past 2 weeks trying to fishless cycle our tank, and learned some valuable lessons:

To start: the tank has numerous kinds of live plants (there are NO fake plants in this tank). Anakaris, Anubis, Moneywort, Corkscrew Val, Ruffled Val, American Val, Wisteria, Hedge, and Java Moss. The Wisteria came from our other tanks, and with it came some mystery snail babies. We added driftwood, tying the Java Moss to it with cotton thread and weighting it down with rocks. Filtration is with an API Filstar XP Large. Intake is on the right side and the powerhead is on the left. We added a bubble curtain that runs the length of the tank in the back.

I filled one of the filter trays with ceramic media...half is the API stars, and the other half is the Fluval BioMax.

We kicked off the fishless cycle by adding some shrimp pellets. But after a day, no change in levels (I'm impatient). So we added some ammonia that we got from WalMart. Bad idea. The Great Value clear ammonia has a surfactant in it. Thankfully it's NOT a detergent, but still, the tank frothed really bad. But the ammonia levels went up. We dosed the tank with StressZyme and waited for the Nitrites to spike.

It never happened. We skimmed the foam off, did a 50% water change, and added more StressZyme. Still nothing. So we got some of the janitorial grade ammonia from Ace. Dosed the tank...and the ammonia SKYROCKETED. To mitigate the high ammonia levels, I added a packet of the API AmmoZorb to the filter. We used Prime to chelate the ammonia, and added some QuickStart. After a few 25% water changes, the ammonia dropped back down to 1 ppm and the Nitrites jumped. We continued to add ammonia to keep the levels up, and eventually saw a Nitrate spike.

Unfortunately, the Nitrite level never dropped. We did several 50% water changes, chelated with Prime, even swapped the AmmoZorb for NitraZorb. We kept the ammonia up to 2ppm, and every 6 hours, it's gone. The nitrates bounced between 10 and 80 ppm (depending on water changes), but the Nitrites remained off the scale high.

After 2 weeks of having a really nice tank setup but no fish, we figured we'd put something in. After all, the snails seemed to be doing just fine. Chelated with Prime that morning, got 11 Giant Danios, changed out 50% of the water, added StressZyme, and then let the fish out of the bag.

They're fine, but the levels aren't changing. The water change dropped the Nitrate levels, but not the Nitrites. We did notice that they seemed to be a bit bored.

So we got a MarineLand Maxi-Jet 1200 powerhead, placed next to the filter powerhead. The fish are really happy with the current, but more amazingly, Nitrite levels have dropped to less than 1ppm overnight, and Nitrates are way down. Apparently we didn't have sufficient agitation to push the Nitrites and Nitrates into the filter. :/

Once we see 0 Nitrites, we'll get our YoYo loaches. Moral of the story, get a powerhead if you have a long tank.