kuhli question

[maaltan]

I'm curious, do the kuhli loaches exibit the same weather predicting properties of the dojo loach?

I started with 2 of them. After about a week they were quite social.. I guess.
They would swim around starting about 8:00pm and be pretty active. My light is set to turn of at midnight. Shortly after then a storm ran through and they quieted down again and I barely saw them unless I went poking around my plants.

I purchased some more because of recomendations of keeping them in a group. I got to more (4 total). One of the new ones died of apparent aggressive netting from the LFS.

The 3 I have left hide all the time. The only time I saw one was about 11:30 that night the big snow storm blew through the area.

I'm taking the dead one back today and probably going to get an extra one or two bringing the total to 5-6.

I'm hoping that they eventually get their activity back. They were interesting for a while. Although, one of them will sneak out about 3-5 inches to snare a piece of flake food and drag it back to thier respective holes.

thanks

edit: by swimming around i mean head against the glass scouring it in nearly perfect circles. One likes to go with the flow of the water created by a bubble curtain. Up the bubbles, down the back side across the bottom etc. One used to swim in counterclockwise(never clockwise) circles in the front right of the tank. If you could fix a diamond bit to thier heads they would cut nearly perfect circles in the glass. they would do that for hours nonstop.

 

[OrionGirl]

Mine are very social--but they stay at the bottom of the tank, and zip in and out of the plants and wood piles. The only time they would start heading towards the surface was when water conditions dropped off--they are very , very sensitive to ammonia and nitrite.

 

[maaltan]

I forgot to mention also that mine are the "black kuhli loach" which, to the best of my ability to find information about them, is a completely different animal that just happens to be shaped similar. A more proper name would be a java loach or javaneese loach. Don't know if this will affect anyones answers.

All my tests read zero. Ph 7 DKH is 3-4 and DGH averages about 2-3.

They didn't seem to be in distress. One actually "played" with my cat who would paw at the glass and the loach would chase the paw around. Now they just sit around since I added the new ones. I guess its possible the cat got too rough and started beating on the tank, but i doubt it. She hid under the bed for a week once she noticed something moving around inside the tank. The swordtail males always win a standdown when she gets close. They flair the fins and the cat goes running.

 

[OrionGirl]

I actually have both. They intermingle happily, and have very similar behaviors.