weeding finds

[fishorama]

I did a major weeding & water change on my 55g "riverish" tank this week. I removed a ton of duckweed, java moss & jungle vals. I found I still have a black worm colony The bolbitus seems a bit stunted, maybe I got carried away last time I picked off old leaves with bba & moss. But the java moss was not quite as bad in it so I'll save that removal chore for another day.

I also found an algae coated weighted thermometer! (what is that, another stick?) That was after the small wood I thought had bolbitus on it came loose. I think the oldest roots had died off as the wood broke down. The tank has be set up for 9 years so not surprising.

I had to feel around to find the MIA sponge prefilter & clean off the now clogged intake. I need new sponges! But a couple loaches are grazing on it...& maybe something friskier is going on too. An adult male seems to be chasing, grooming...or?? I can't tell the gender of the small "chasee", a young female maybe? I always see a couple new fry in Jan. or Feb. but maybe now is when they breed? These are the slowest growing fry ever!!

I leave moss along the tank back but I did fingernail scrape to remove some. I couldn't remove it all if tried really hard (I have). My sewellia loaches breed every year so I leave some for eggs & fry to hide in. It actually looks quite nice with duckweed stuck on it kind of like a wall of HC if I don't look hard I never truly clean the back glass, my loaches are algae grazers. They have cleaned a white rock halfway since there's many fewer plants to graze on. It's kind of blinding now, lol.

I could actually vacuum the Eco substrate at 1 end but I didn't "swirl'n'vac" near the crypts or black worms' end. I was sore enough from all this tank fun, ha!

My have fish been very active since all this...maybe they always are but I couldn't see them.

I wish I had before & after pics to share but that's not my hobby, as some of you know. It's probably easy with a smart phone...but I don't have 1. I'm a Luddite & have to take & load them onto a hosting site...well, not happening...

 

[Wyomingite]

Sounds like fun. And I mean that. I have never been able to bring myself to feed any worms that could actually colonize my tank and set up a somewhat consistent source of snacks. There's not enough room in the fish room for me to jump if I came across them when I was doing tank maintenance.

What kind of loaches are acting (maybe) frisky?

WYite

 

[fishorama]

Sewellia lineolata, reticulated hillstream loaches. They are the reason I tried a river-ish tank first after I moved to CA. I'd read about them & had seen their pics, so cute! & someone in CA on AC bred them so I could get F-1s (first geration from wild)...so I did. Then on loaches.com I read odessey's stiphodon goby neverending thread, so I tried a few species of them too. This tank has been very interesting & it sits right next to my computer!!

I offered many foods including live black worms & cherry shrimp. I've never seen any RCS, I don't know if the hide or have died out. But when I uproot "jungle val" I see a few black worms in the roots. I'm not really into culturing live foods after trying white worms & red wigglers (the Cadillac of food, like on SCTV if you're old enough to remember that) when I was raising discus in MA. It's too hot for either here most of the year...& too large for my loaches & gobies in this tank...but there was substrate activity near where I saw the BWs...I dunno, but it is an interesting fun tank. I miss botia & other loaches...I have room in other tanks when I'm ready for them. I prefer to see the fish I buy...but I may have to mail order...

 

[Wyomingite]

Sewellia lineolata, reticulated hillstream loaches. They are the reason I tried a river-ish tank first after I moved to CA. I'd read about them & had seen their pics, so cute! & someone in CA on AC bred them so I could get F-1s (first geration from wild)...so I did. Then on loaches.com I read odessey's stiphodon goby neverending thread, so I tried a few species of them too. This tank has been very interesting & it sits right next to my computer!!

I offered many foods including live black worms & cherry shrimp. I've never seen any RCS, I don't know if the hide or have died out. But when I uproot "jungle val" I see a few black worms in the roots. I'm not really into culturing live foods after trying white worms & red wigglers (the Cadillac of food, like on SCTV if you're old enough to remember that) when I was raising discus in MA. It's too hot for either here most of the year...& too large for my loaches & gobies in this tank...but there was substrate activity near where I saw the BWs...I dunno, but it is an interesting fun tank. I miss botia & other loaches...I have room in other tanks when I'm ready for them. I prefer to see the fish I buy...but I may have to mail order...

I really like the lineolatas, they are really attractive fish. I keep saying I'm going to try them one day. I wondered because it used to be general wisdom that botias didn't spawn in aquariums, but I haven't paid any attention to what advances have been made in loach husbandry in a long time. I've always dreamed of waking up to a bunch of little zebra loaches shuffling around and poking their little snouts in the sand. That would be soooooo cute!

The only botias I've kept besides zebras were a single skunk loach that was 4" and a red tail loach that was 6" or maybe a little bigger. I know they're not "botias" any more technically. Both were rescues from a guy who had them in a 20 gallon tank with some African cichlids and tiger barbs. The dumba$$ couldn't figure out why his cichlids kept killing everything else so he decided to get rid of all his fish and start over with just an oscar. I took his fish and tried to talk him out of the oscar, but, uhhh, that didn't work so well. Go figure. Anyways, these two hid all the time and I hardly ever saw them. I'm guessing it was because they had no companions. This was pre-internet days, so sources were limited and easily finding any was out of the question.

95% of my fish are mail order anymore. There hasn't been a LFS in Cheyenne for probably 25 years, the nearest one is 50 miles away (and specializes in SW) and the nearest good one for FW is a hundred miles away. That's a long way to drive just to browse and see if they might have what I'm looking for or want. I only order from a handful of places though, and never from a place that I haven't had a thumbs up about from somebody else.

I've had a culture of scuds for I don't know how long now, maybe 10 years, in a 20 gallon long. This is actually from wild caught individuals out of a lake. I think I'm going to catch some daphnia this summer and set up a culture of them too. No worms here though (shiver down the spine), lol.

WYite

 

[NoahLikesFish]

IMO I would get some river rocks and get a ton of biofilm and get your plants out, in a loach/goby tank floaters shouldn’t be alive, they live in fast flow rivers

 

[Sprinkle]

IMO I would get some river rocks and get a ton of biofilm and get your plants out, in a loach/goby tank floaters shouldn’t be alive, they live in fast flow rivers

They still could thrive with slower flow, and i am pretty sure Fishorama knows.
They do it for their fishes best intent.

 

[fishorama]

I do have many smooth river rocks & after 9 years there's lots of biofilm & algae available. The loaches sometimes graze on the plants & like I said, they breed so plants give hiding places for eggs & fry.

As for duckweed I didn't have much until I put prefilter sponges on to, again, protect eggs & fry. I have 2 AC 70s & a power head for flow. Not a "true" river tank with a manifold but it works for me.

IMO/E sewellia are 1 of the easiest hillstream loaches to keep & breed. The only other 1s I've kept were gastromyzon ctenocephalus.