Loaches Online Forum

Thank you Martin for directing me to this forum. I have a 50gal long river tank built from Martin's article. Surfing your forum recently, I've seen some incredible river tanks. I love mine. I joined this forum to learn as much as I can about Hillstream's and have hopes that I can get them happy enough to breed someday. I've searched the forum for info and have just began reading the 2500 related hits on Hillstreams. I setup a small river tank before and now I've made this 50gal long Here's my setup:
Stock: 3 Beaufortia's of some sort, 4 P. Cheni as far as I can tell. It also house's a school of 6 Harliquin rasbora's and 6 Sissortail rasbora's.
PH: 7.0
Temp: 72F
GH: 20
KH: 20
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10
Ammonia: 0
Filtration: 1XDynoflo 3 and 1X penguin 100

It has 2X Aquaclear 70 powerheads with a 3/4" manifold. My intake's are a little tall but they helped with the flow for me. I do have pics and will post some if that is OK.

Keeb

Hi Keeb and welcome to LOL.

Got any pictures of your nice big river tank?

Welcome to Loaches Online, Keeb! Yes, do post some pictures, we'd all love to see your River Tank.

Emma

pics of fish, tanks, or setups are always welcome. its really nice for those of us that cant afford really nice or big setups like me. I love seeing the large beautiful fish and setups it keeps me dreaming =)

Here's a few pics of my 50gal long river tank. It's nothing extravagant but works well. The Hillstreams love it. My camera is terrible. I'm going to borrow a good camera and snap a bunch of shots in the near future. I need some clear close shots so I can get help correctly identifying my Hillstreams.

Nice tank! I'm sure the hillstreams love it.
That fish in the last two pics looks like it might be a Pseudogastromyzon fangi instead of P. cheni.

fangi definately looks right to me. Thank you. I'm amazed that you could tell from that picture. The pics on the ID card match those 4 Hillstreams. The other 3 I think are Beaufortia kweichowensis but not positive. 1 or 2 of them might be a type of spotted. I hope to get better pictures this weekend. Is there any potential for these species breeding in my tank?

Keeb

I thought it might be a fangi due primarily to the dorsal fin and body shape. The spots helped too.
While I don't know of fangi spawning in captivity, I would imagine its highly possible that they would. As you probably know, P. cheni spawns in capitivity so there is good reason to believe fangi would too.
Someone reported on this site a few years ago that they had spawning of beaufortia, but we were never able to confirm that.

Hi Leith.....told you that you would get lots of response on here (rabid hillstream enthusiasts).
I encoded your pictures so they came up in the post. You need to highlight the URL, then click on the Img button above the message box.

Like Jim says, it's quite possible that you could breed particularly the [img]P.%20fangi[/img]. It's possible though that you might need to remove the rasboras for small fry to survive though. Harlequins particularly are quite effective fry hunters.

Martin.

I originally posted the images to show but edited them to link after I read the rules of posting pics. But now that I know, I'll just post the image. I was gonna ask about the Rasbora's....I guess I should probably remove them then. Is their any link's to breeding info? What does it take to get colours to show in Hillstreams fins that I've seen?

Keeb

Breeding info on Pseudogastromyzon cheni:

http://www.loaches.com/articles/sexing- ... yzon-cheni

You won't see colour in Beaufortia, but the P. fangi should get yellow in the dorsal fin. Just keep their water clean, give them a variety of foodstuffs and once they settle in they will colour up.

Martin.

cool. i notice you have your jets very low to the bottom of the tank. i was worried that the chord would get water in it. i am assuming this is safe. do you get better filtration having the water flow near the bottom of the tank?

I don't think there's a single power-head made now that isn't a completely sealed unit. I've operated Aquaclear 802s at low level for about 8 years now. Never had a problem.
Lowering the pumps has no effect upon filtration. It just gets the water flow down close to where hillstream loaches primarily live.

Martin.

Lovely looking set-up!

Very nice indeed!