Loaches Online Forum

Very nice! Those Czech Histroinica's certainly look hyper in your video, Martin.

Tell you what Graeme. With those guys in this tank Dither-fish are redundant. They are out and about absolutely all day. As you saw in the hand-feeding vid, they're first to the food as well.

Martin.

Yeah they seem to should no fear or any consideration to whom is around them, well thats the impression i get from the video.

Have they changed much in appearance? I'm hinting for update pictures here.

Hehe! A project that I want to get together is a series of pictures showing their development. I only have 3 left now due to various disasters and a jumper, but the markings are unique enough that I can search my photos and make consecutive stacks of photos for each individual.
They grew like weeds to around 2.25 inches, then slowed. The one that was christened Curly-Q because of the period he went through with curly barbels is all normal now and the largest. They totally overtook in size my 3 kubotai that I've owned for years.
Another if you remember had this sort of "loose" looking mucus coat and generally looked sickly for a while. I treated this successfully, but a month or so after moving them from the Q-tank it returned. Very weird because he seemed healthy in every other way.
I decided that treating the 125 for one fish wasn't on and decided to see what would happen. There was never any sign of the condition being contagious.
As it progressed, the fish started to lose it's fins. Kind of like fin-rot, but with no obvious breaking up of the fins, just shrinkage. At this point I thought I ought to try and catch him out and treat him, but as soon as they see a net they dissapear and there was no way I was going to disturb this tank that much for this one little fish.
It seems that my instinct to leave him alone was correct. Maybe he needed to fight this thing and build up his resustance to it? Eventually, the fins started to replenish themselves and the cloudy mucus coating dissapeared. Now he looks absolutely normal and has fattened up too. He never looked as fat as the others before.
The 3 of them interact all the time and are very friendly when my hand is in the tank. Just don't show them a net!

Martin.

Oh very nice! Live plants as well i take it?

Very beautiful and i love how active it is.

I hope you don't mind that I bumped this thread, Martin.

With all the talk about Mick's missing voice part in his video, I thought Tanja might enjoy yours. I know I did.

really nice setups martin, thats some power going through that tank,
i also like the rig youve done with the lighting,
sweet.

mick

ps i was expecting you speak with a canadian accent, what a surprise.

mick

I always like your posts, pictures and this video. You explain things very well. My loach education is improving even if I still haven't been able to take any good loach pictures. You have inspired me to try again soon.