Hillstream Loach River Tank

[NoDeltaH2O]

Not only am I a lousy photographer, but my memory sucks too! Ah yes, I have two of those in there. They are killifish of some kind. I have had little success positively identifying him (I know he's a male). I think they might go by the common name "Wonders Killifish", but not sure. They share the top of the tank with the glass catfish. THe picture you cited doesn't do this guy justice. His scales are highly reflective, and usually I just get a reflection from the flash when I try to take a pic of him. He is greena and yellow, with orange and red fins. Very colorful.


The next 2 pics show him in differing light settings due to flash. You are right, he is mostly green

http://www.lehigh.edu/~ded2/aquarium/killifish.jpg



http://www.lehigh.edu/~ded2/aquarium/killifish2.jpg



Here are a couple of my glass catfish hanging out together. These guys can't see too well in bright light, so when I feed them, I usually turn the hood lights off and leave the room lights on. With just room lights on, they swim around happily eating whatever I feed them; flakes, worms, daphnia, etc.

http://www.lehigh.edu/~ded2/aquarium/GlassCatfish.jpg



And yet another pic of my Hillstream Loach on the glass. He slides along eating diatoms and the other algaes that coat the glass. Notice that you can see his heart beating when he is on the glass. His heart is the red thing high on his belly.


http://www.lehigh.edu/~ded2/aquarium...m_on_Glass.jpg

[NoDeltaH2O]

Sorry for the bad link: Here it is again.

Here are a couple of my glass catfish hanging out together. These guys can't see too well in bright light, so when I feed them, I usually turn the hood lights off and leave the room lights on. With just room lights on, they swim around happily eating whatever I feed them; flakes, worms, daphnia, etc.

You can see a 2.8MB avi video file of them schooling here:
Glass Catfish Schooling under some floating DuckWeed & MicroSword


http://www.lehigh.edu/~ded2/aquarium/GlassCatfish.JPG

[dss2004]

Beautiful tank. I absolutely love natural tanks that are left to grow. That is defintely my next plant pursuit.

I saw those loaches in a magazine once but I have never seen them at any fish store. What a great find!

Hey if you like Killifish and ever want a great algae eater go for the American-Flag Fish. Real easy to keep and I have never seen a fish eat more algae. Real pretty too.

Anyway great tank. Is it a standard 55 gallon?

[NoDeltaH2O]

Surprise! It is only 20 gallon in size. I guess it looks bigger because I prefer smaller fish.

And speaking of small fish, here are a few more pics of the illusive hillstream loaches. They can almost always be found glued to a smooth rock nibbling on algae and critters too small to see. I also feed them frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp which they go crazy for. Hopefully someday soon I'll get them to breed for me. I can dream, can't I?!
HillStream Loach on Rock 1
HillStream Loach on Rock 2
HillStream Loach on Rock 3

[MrParker]

How long did it take you to plant that thing and get it all set up like holy cow. And your anacharis look really good, and long, and dark green. is maintenence on that hard?

[TaffyFish]

David,

I had a hillstream loach in my 4ft coldwater tank for seven months, then it went and died on me. Initially, it did a great job of cleaning the algae from the tank glass and rockwork but eventually slowed down without putting on any size that I could make out. Latterly it prefered to eat the food I was adding for the WCM minnows, weather loaches and goldfish and stayed in its cave outside of feeding times. Am sure this was pure coincidence but after I added a pair of garra pingi pingi, the hillstream loach was dead within 2 weeks.
Still, the garras are a lot more fun and do a lot more algae cleaning than the hillstream loach!

I would have expected them to be quite territorial, many bottom feeders are, how many do you have in that 20g? How long would you expect them to live for?

Good luck with your attempts to breed them, be sure to let us in on your progress because there's not much information out there yet.
cheers
David

[NoDeltaH2O]

MrParker asked, "How long did it take you to plant that thing and get it all set up like holy cow. And your anacharis look really good, and long, and dark green. is maintenence on that hard?"

I started planting it about a yaer ago, but the tenellus has came in only since last August. I put 2 little shoots of it in and in the last 7 months it has spread like crazy, covering the middle section of the tank on the "west side". The shrimp love to hide in it. The anacharis looks so good because i add iron daily. An apogneton is recovering as well thanks to the daily dose of iron. I have a powerhead that bubbles CO2 in and that helps just as much. I clip anacharis about every 10days to 2 weeks and that's it besides changing the DIY CO2 jugs every 7-10 days depending on the quality of the yeast I am able to get.

Taffyfish asked, "I would have expected them to be quite territorial, many bottom feeders are, how many do you have in that 20g? How long would you expect them to live for?"

I have 4 of them but am desperately looking for more. I bought some online but there was a US$25 shipping cost, effectively making my $5 fish $8 a piece. I got some in Hong Kong also on Tung Choi Street (the goldfish market) last spring. They go for about 50 cents a piece there since that is the part of the world they come from, but not as many made the trip in the plane as I had hoped. I am hoping for them to reappear this summer in the LFSs around here in the NE US.

Honestly I am not sure how long they live. I wish I knew. I guess Mia Woodman is one of the foremost experts on these. Her river tank website website is where I first got the idea to set up a hillstream loach river tank. There was a guy BobD... who successfully spawned them too. It is pretty uncommon, and I probably have too many other fish in the tank for them to spawn. I'll thin it out some day (the fish, not the plants) and probably only then will get spawning.

Territorial:
I guess you could say they are, but they don't harm each other or anybody else at all. They do all have preferred rocks, with the biggest one taking a flat smooth algae covered rock right in front of the powerhead nozzle where he can sit directly in the current.

garra pingi pingi? Got a pic of them?
Also, where did you get you hillstream loach from?

[seastaar88]

neat fish!

[wayne]

Do you get any yellowing of your water, going so long without water changes. How do you think you're avoiding this?

[TaffyFish]

Normally hillstream Loach types shouldn't be in the same tank as more aggressive schistura, nemachelius, or Botia species. These fish are going to be split up soon. Both sets of fish are from fast-flowing rivers, but the hillstreams are not very good at combating for food.

Hmm! I didn't think it was entirely coincidental that my hillstream loach died 2 weeks after I'd introduced the garras. On the other hand, the loach was definitely on a downward trend of activity and feeding and hadn't put much size on during the 7 months I had it. From the little I managed to research on hillstream loaches we have a few secrets to unlock yet.
There's just as little known about garras, I've seen sizes quoted from 5" to 12" for example.
www.fishpondinfo.com/misc.htm#garra
www.webcityof.com/miff1038.htm
http://www.gardenbanter.co.uk/archiv...003/04/3/16029
http://petsolutions.com/product.asp_...Algae+Eater_E_
http://www.aquariacentral.com/specie...view_records=1
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebI...eeatersart.htm

Like Wayne, I'm a bit suspicious of the water change regime that you have. The strategy seems to be entirely based on maintaining low nitrate levels, but don't we as fishkeepers just use the nitrate level as an indicator for other pollutants? I mean you are obviously addressing the build up of nitrates but what about other pollutants that you're not measuring? If you rely on plant and fish health as your ultimate indicator then you risk taking the set up right to the point of a crash before being able to react. I'd love to read a more scientific and reasoned response than "I maintain my tanks in balance." I've never known what that meant. :-)