Loaches Online Forum

Hi All

hope you can help i have a very ill Hillstream Loache and hes just laying at the bottom of the tank not moving at all - he is breating tho....

Im a bit miffed because i think i have purchased one off bad advice from my local pet shop..

I have a Fish bowl not a tank - i dont have any pumps or filters...

i clean the tank one a week and have a plant.. i have 2 other fish living in the thank with no problems

can you help... should i be keeping a Hillstream Loache in this enviroment?

should i be keeping a Hillstream Loache in this enviroment?

Absolutely no.

You will probably get a better advice from someone else soon, but to get you started:

Add an air stone immediately.

Thanks, i have already added oxygen tablets.. would that do or shall i ad the air stone aswell..?

Unfortunately, there is not much you can do in a bowl.

Hopefully, someone else here has a good idea, but if nobody else responds, your loach probably has a slighly better chance if quickly returned to the store. Ask the store to put him into their most oxigenated tank, and under a powerhead, if they can.

You should take the dead fish back to the shop and at least demand a refund. Fish bowls and loaches don't mix.

Where is your location Mikeb?

yorkshire the uk

hes looks to be springing back to life... do they play dead? lol

The shire is large Mikeb.

PM me your chosen lfs please.

Graeme Robson wrote:The shire is large Mikeb.

PM me your chosen lfs please.

whats lfs?

local fish shop.

Hi Mikeb,

Unfortunatly as others have already pointed out, a fish bowl is just about the worst environment imagionable for a hillstream loach. They are highly specialised to live in fast flowing and highly oxygenated waters, and in the stagnant and unnatural conditions of a bowl, will eventually suffocate. This is yet another case of a poorly informed LFS mis-selling a fish which they have little or no knowledge of (a subject on which i posted only yesturday). Unless you can afford to re-home it in a more suitable tank with plenty of aeration, then im afraid your loach has a very slim chance of survival, let alone a decent quality of life. Your best bet is to take the fish back to the shop and demand a refund. Also read (and show the LFS!) Martin Theone's article 'Hillstream loaches: specialists at life in the fast lane', on the main LOL site.

I don't even know where to begin.You have come to the right place to get info on these fish. I think others have covered it well in saying you need to get that fish back to the fish store as soon as possible and trade it in before it dies. Hillstreams are just not adapted to low oxygen conditions and will die if kept in them. Sometimes, during shipment to stores, they are deprived of oxygen will often not recover even if given the right conditions after arriving at the store.
As Gary said, you need to read Martin's article on hillstreams. If you have a printer, print off a copy and give it to the people at the fish store so maybe they won't kill more of these fish.

Jim Powers wrote:If you have a printer, print off a copy and give it to the people at the fish store so maybe they won't kill more of these fish.

Unfortunately, this would not work. Most people in a fs are simply not interested in reading long articles and may not even be able to read.

What would be nice is to make a one-page handout in large print. Something like this (very approximately):

Hillstreams for Beginners.
Hillstream loaches come in different shapes:
<pictures of a sucker, lizard, possibly of a pseudogastro>
Hillstream loaches cannot tolerate a tropical community tank or a fishbowl, you need to provide a plenty of oxygen and a strong current. Get a good air stone and a powerhead. .......<add more here but not too much>.....
....
Smaller print:
Make sure to read Martin Thoene's article on <URL> for more important details and how to build a healthy hillstream tank before getting your first hillstream.

I'd love to see this kind of a handout in the place where I got mine last week.

This kind of thing is so sad. Sadly, I put one of these in my first tank on the advice of a pet store employee. He said as long as I had green algae in my tank it would be fine, and I wouldn't even need to feed him. It was a 10 gallon tank with only a UGF and about 10 tetras with plastic plants and was kept at 79deg F. Not surprisingly, it died within a week, and I didn't know why until much later. Unfortunately you should never trust anything a fish store employee says. It is impossible to know if they know what they're talking about. Sometimes those that are the most sure of what they are saying come up with the most rediculous 'facts'.