I was on loaches.com and I read this crazy story.
My name is Colin Frater (age 15) and my brother Eric (age 10) has a very interesting Pakistani Loach. He's about an inch and a half long and lives in a 10gal. with a pleco, a small parrot fish, and a few guppies (an interesting assortment!). A few days after we got him, we went to watch and he wasn't there. We thoroughly searched the tank, but couldn't find him! We have one of those Eclipse hoods, so we opened up the filter compartment lid to get a top view of the tank, then suddenly heard a splashing sound from inside the compartment where the bio-wheel sits. We looked inside, and there he was swimming around! This just blew our minds, because to get up there, he had to swim up a fast-moving stream of water that fell for about two inches out of a plastic chute, then up a short tube and into the compartment labeled #1 (see picture). I don't remember exactly how we got him to go back down, but I think he just went down on his own after I lifted the Bio-'Wheel up.
We thought that this was a weird one-time thing, but about two months later (that's this week) we couldn't find him once again, so right away, I lifted up the filter compartment lid and looked around. Right away I saw him. He was swimming around on top of the filter cartridge where the pump dumped unfiltered tank water. My brother hadn't changed the cartridge recently, so there was just enough water for him to submerge himself in on top of the cartridge and plenty flowing of the overflow chute, which he swam up to get into there. His path is shown on the picture ending at #2. While my brother looked for a net I watched him swim around for a while, but he did yet another weird thing, he began to swim into the pump! At first he kind of went halfway in, but then stuck his head in and disappeared! I saw his tail pop out once and I tried to gently grab it and pull it out, but it wasn't out long enough for me to grab it and he stayed inside there without a single sighting for about two minutes. This scared me because not too much farther down was the impeller, which could easily kill a small fish like him. This was a problem because we couldn't turn the pump off or he would be trapped and suffocate in there, but we didn't want to grind him. Luckily, he shot back out in one piece after about two minutes after which I blocked off the pump opening with my fingers. We finally got a net and dumped him back into the tank, but that was a very weird experience! It's a good thing loaches are so tough. We have also seen him numerous other times lying upside down and totally motionless under a rock ledge, I was sure he had died one time, but my brother just tapped on the glass and he snapped right out of it and began swimming around again. Do Pakistani loaches have some sort of instinct to swim upstream? This one sure seems to!
My name is Colin Frater (age 15) and my brother Eric (age 10) has a very interesting Pakistani Loach. He's about an inch and a half long and lives in a 10gal. with a pleco, a small parrot fish, and a few guppies (an interesting assortment!). A few days after we got him, we went to watch and he wasn't there. We thoroughly searched the tank, but couldn't find him! We have one of those Eclipse hoods, so we opened up the filter compartment lid to get a top view of the tank, then suddenly heard a splashing sound from inside the compartment where the bio-wheel sits. We looked inside, and there he was swimming around! This just blew our minds, because to get up there, he had to swim up a fast-moving stream of water that fell for about two inches out of a plastic chute, then up a short tube and into the compartment labeled #1 (see picture). I don't remember exactly how we got him to go back down, but I think he just went down on his own after I lifted the Bio-'Wheel up.
We thought that this was a weird one-time thing, but about two months later (that's this week) we couldn't find him once again, so right away, I lifted up the filter compartment lid and looked around. Right away I saw him. He was swimming around on top of the filter cartridge where the pump dumped unfiltered tank water. My brother hadn't changed the cartridge recently, so there was just enough water for him to submerge himself in on top of the cartridge and plenty flowing of the overflow chute, which he swam up to get into there. His path is shown on the picture ending at #2. While my brother looked for a net I watched him swim around for a while, but he did yet another weird thing, he began to swim into the pump! At first he kind of went halfway in, but then stuck his head in and disappeared! I saw his tail pop out once and I tried to gently grab it and pull it out, but it wasn't out long enough for me to grab it and he stayed inside there without a single sighting for about two minutes. This scared me because not too much farther down was the impeller, which could easily kill a small fish like him. This was a problem because we couldn't turn the pump off or he would be trapped and suffocate in there, but we didn't want to grind him. Luckily, he shot back out in one piece after about two minutes after which I blocked off the pump opening with my fingers. We finally got a net and dumped him back into the tank, but that was a very weird experience! It's a good thing loaches are so tough. We have also seen him numerous other times lying upside down and totally motionless under a rock ledge, I was sure he had died one time, but my brother just tapped on the glass and he snapped right out of it and began swimming around again. Do Pakistani loaches have some sort of instinct to swim upstream? This one sure seems to!
