KittenFishMom

I saw this kuhli loach not taking cover today. He was just laying on the bottom, looking pale. but the loaches I bought were not all dark. The loach has a white area under the back end edge of it's back fin. It also has a pale area on it's back maybe a half inch in front of the back fin that is about a half inch long and covers both sides of his back. When the guppies swim by, they peck at the white spot as if it were food. The loach will take off at being pecked and swim up the side of the glass, getting his head as far out of the water as he can. He has also done this several time in the isolation contain where he is alone, except for a IAL that has been in the tank 2 days and is very soft. sometimes he is under the leaf, other times he is on top. The other 2 kuhli loach and all the guppies in the tank are behaving normally. I am not sure if isolating the loach would really stress him. I don't know if he is injured or has an infection that could be contagious. There have been no problem with the water in that tank in over a week. I am checking all my tanks at least twice a day as I am starting to transition them to well water. That tanks is stocked mostly smallish female guppies has not been over crowded since the batch of females went to the LFS. Please Let me know what you think is wrong and how best to treat the loach and / or the tank. water parms Nitrate 20 ppm Nitrite 0 ppm GH way above scale of 300ppm Buffere KH 40 ppm pH 6.6 no chlorine temp 81 f You can see the spot best in this photo This one shows the spot and the pale area Here are other shots from different angles. These guys t not like to hold still at all

This morning, the female is on her side in the cave. I can only see the end of her tail. The male is foraging below te sponge of the sponge filter. The kuhli loaches are slowly circling the flat back of the tank. I don't feed today, so I will wait a bit to test their water.

@MattHasMTS I know they don't breed in home aquariums. It is uncanny how they keep going into their nest together, and then one at a time. They go in and lay on the sand for a while, then trade places for a while and then squeeze in together for a while. They are acting just like the native fish in the lake act when they breed. I wonder what it is that makes it fail every time. They were swimming together for a few days. This morning the thin one worked and worked to move the sand. Now they are using the hollow just like a pair of breeding fish. We are at the shallow end of the lake, so I watch fish breed every summer. When you watch them, you can tell the bullheads apart, this is missing a barbel, that one has a scrape on it's side, another has a line mark on it's back. You can tell when they pair up, and they stay together until the fry are big enough to be on their own. The Bullhead catfish digs a hole, but the mud here is more stable than the sand in my tank. I kept watching them while I was trying separate fine seaweed from the scuds I caught tonight. Funny, I haven't seen the kuhli loaches this afternoon. I wonder if they are doing the same thing under the sponge filter?

I had something like this last February. It didn't bother that fish, but it block my filters and crashed my nitrogen cycle. If I saw it in my tank, I would squeeze and manipulate my filter media in tank water to make sure the water was still moving through it correctly. My sponge filters kept bubbling, but I could not see that the water was not moving water through the sponge.

My yoyo loaches are now merrily digging out a cozy nest area under the ceramic log, with some driftwood hiding the doorway. I don't have the heart to tell them the sand is going to continue to fill it almost as fast as they dig it, and they won't be see little loaches zipping around. They are having a grand time, and hardly notice the betta building inspector when he tries to see what is going on. One loach even bumped into the male betta by mistake. The kuhli loaches are oblivious and just keep swimming around. I have been mixing well water in with the spring water. The KH test, in the well water was suppose to change color by 12 drops. At 15 drops I decided to get some distilled water and dilute the well water 1:1 or 1:3 and test it, then multiply it back up to get a full strength reading. I am also getting a Ca test kit on Wednesday. Depending on those results, I might even get an Mg kit. I really want to understand what is in the well water, so I can try to stock for the water, rather than doctor the water for the fish I stock. The water is "completely soft" which I assume means little or no Ca or Mg with a high pH and a very high KH. An unusual combination. I hope it is suitable for more than a rubber ducky. Updates to follow when I get consistently reproducible test results. Trick or Treat ! Happy Halloween !

A quick update. The kuhli loach are just like cats and children. Here they are ignoring their new toy from close by: (They are all 3 draped over the heater protector's suction cup. The sand "nest" I made for them to play in is lower and to the right. The ceramic hollow log is to the left.)

@Newbie They were labeled as dwarf chain loaches when I bought them. I will either buy more when they move to my 55 gallon I am building, or rehome home them. When I got them home and got a better look at them, I realized they were yoyo loaches. The store said they would give me store credit, but not take the fish back. I knew I was planning the 55 build. I don't know any fish people with large tanks. What do you think I should have done?

@Colu Thank, so I don't need to do anything differently. She with be comfortable with the tank mates she has, right?

I have a planted half cylinder tank, about 10 gallons, with 2 yoyo loaches, one male betta (plakat) and 4 dark kuhli loaches. One of the yoyo loaches looks to me like she is carrying eggs, the other does not at all. They are both active and eating and have grown faster than any fish I have had. I know yoyo loach don't breed in home aquariums. Do I need to do anything so she does not get egg bound? When they are swimming, they look like water ballet, doing graceful relaxed loops and following each other. They also spend a good bit of time in a hollow ceramic log together and digging in the java moss. I could remove the male betta pretty easily, but right now I don't have a tank for him. I do have someone who is planning on adopting my red view tail betta when the guppies are gone, which could happen sooner to free up a tank for the male betta, if need be. I think I would have to trap the 4 kuhli loaches if I needed to take them out of the tank. I don't think I could net them without removing all the plants and heater etc. If I could catch them, I could have them go in the other tanks that each have 3 kuhli loaches. Do I need to remove the other fish, or do anything else or is everything fine the way it is? My spouse is much better with the camera and will take photos soon.

I tested my well water with the API fresh water kit and the GH & Kh kit. I got Well water pH 8.4 Ammonia 0.5 ppm Nitrite 0 ppm Nitrate 0 ppm GH 1 drop KH 15 drops, did not change 1 drop turned green I left a voice mail at API to make sure I was doing the Khans GH test correctly. It is star that our water is completely soft with such a high pH. I think maybe the water has a lot of magnesium, and almost no calcium. I was surprised with the amount of ammonia in the well water. I let they well water sit in a partially filled open jug overnight before testing it. I am working toward transitioning my tanks to well water from bottled spring water. I have neon tetras, peppered corys, kuhli loaches, yoyo loaches male bettas, and guppies I am rehoming. I also have a lot of plants and snails ans wondershell and crushed coral as a source of calcium for the guppies and growing fish. I have been using Seachem Alanine Buffer to lower the pH and increase the K for the bottled spring water. I'm not sure what to do about the well water. It seems to have a high pH and high Kh All thoughts welcome.

@TheSwissAquarist and @nabokovfan87 I bait my big circle hooks with half frozen chicken hearts. You almost never catch anything too small to clean. As the blood thaws, it draws the fish in fast. I use 60 pound test braided line for when I catch driftwood. I never leave a hook in the water for someone else to get hurt on.

@nabokovfan87 My first tank was a 120 Gallon last spring, to hold my catch to take live fish to Mon to eat during her chemo treatments. Never planned to go tropical, but here I am. I sold the 120 and am now surrounded by 4 X 10 gallons and planning to start a build on my 55 gallon inside.

@TheSwissAquarist yes, the pike and the carp and the snapping turtles really fight hard. And the snappers don't stop withyou get them out of the water. Ever catch mirror carp? I think they were bred in monasteries in europe to begin with. They each have unique pattern that never changes, so you can always tell if you can the same one. I tend to fish from shore. You have to bring them in carefully, so they don't wrap the line around a dock.

@TheSwissAquarist They say they are, but rather boney. I tend to catch and release. I got into the aquarium hobby when I set up a 120 gallon tank to hold my catch and keep it healthy and swimming for my Mom to eat. Mom was on chemo, and most things did not appeal, but she loved fresh fish. It was my first tank. Mom loved bullhead catfish and yellow perch.

@TheSwissAquarist and @anewbie and @nabokovfan87 Here is my shark. a northern pike. I don't have a big enough aquarium, so it lives in the lake.

Side stack note: When the crowd would get rude at my school's hockey games, they use to taunt the goalie with "You're not a goalie, you're a sieve, You're not a sieve, you're a funnel, You're not a funnel, your a black hole !" I went to a knirdie school. We had alcohol are football games, to easy the pain, but never at hockey games. The team was too good, you wanted to pay attention.

@anewbie I didn't post it, but it looks like a close up of a black hole. You have to be careful, or they will eat your camera.

@anewbie You are reading my mind. I am doing my 55-gallon tank in Walstad and sand. that is why I had the sand to test drive a kuhli nest. I am over stocked with guppies, but another 25 are going on Monday (yippy!!) so I bought the loaches early hoping the would stir things up and into the HOB. Life will get better for my fih and me once the 55 is going and the guppies are gone. All the tanks are overstocked. I wanted to get the plants growing above air for a while before filling the 55 tank, but it isn't going to work that way. As for sharks, I caught a 36 inch Northern Pike off my front lawn. That is all the shark I need. It was stunning, but I put it back and asked it to let me catch it again when it was 4 feet. If you get nicked by one of their many very sharp teeth, it bleeds like crazy because they have an anticoagulant in the mouths. It can get very messy.

@TheSwissAquarist I am not a breeder. I have bettas to eat the fry @anewbie I only called it a nest because it was round. I could cover the outside with gravel. It a soup bowl. It is an iterative process.

I draped some IAL over one side, and put in some sinking pellets and an algae wafer. I wonder what it will look like in the morning.

@modified lung I can set up container with a few scuds and a few water mites and a bit of plant matter and see what happens in a few days.

I decided to try building a simple kuhli loach nest to see what they think. I rinsed some pool sand and filled a deli cup wit the sand and put it in the front of the smaller female guppy tank. They guppies are having fun investigating it. one is resting on the bottom and the snails are climbing up the sides. Some of the guppies are pecking at the sand. not sure why, I haven't fed the tank for hours. I'll get some photos and keep you posted. guppy and snails checking out nest kuhli loach hiding in heater cover head is top left under light reflection, body is lower right

Thank you to everyone ! @Biotope Biologist @modified lung @TOtrees Now that I know what they are, will they prey on scuds? Will they die off quickly with no food source, or do I need to work on getting them out of the tanks before I add scuds?

I accidentally grew green water in one of the cut off clear gallon jugs I had under a plant light I was using to grow out water plants. Because the containers were so small, I didn't want to burn the plants with fertilizer, so every so often I would give them 1 or 2 betta beads or a tiny pinch of fish food. I took the plants out of a container to put in a tank. I just left the jug of plant water in the jug. Without the plant to take up the nutrients, the water went green.

@Biotope Biologist I was going to ship guppies on Monday that have had these hydrachnidae in the tanks for more than a week. Are they a bad thing? do they hurt the aquarium and the fish? They appear to be improving my water test result and removing cloudiness. The last thing I want to do is spread them if that are bad in tanks.