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The Loach Forum Archives (1)
Kuhlis? Cool. Here's my documentation.
Posted By: Pete <pcooke@rocketmail.com> In Response To: Document! (Amanda Welliver)
Date: Wednesday, 10 February 1999, at 2:13 p.m.
Thanks for the help everyone. As requested, I’m going to provide some documentation of what happened. Please excuse the length of the upcoming narrative but, as you will see, simply citing my pH, temp, etc. would not come close to fully describing the situation in my tank. Bear with me…
About three weeks ago, we were forced to upgrade from a 10 gal tank to a 35 gal tank when the 10 gal started leaking. At that point, I had the 4 guppies, 3 clowns and 1 of the snails. The new tank has a Fluval 303 canister filter (with foam, Bio-Max and activated carbon). In an attempt to rapidly mature the new tank, I transferred most of the water from the old one, and put the activated carbon from my old filter into the new filter. The new tank is lit with two 20 W fluorescent bulbs (1 Sun-Glo and 1 Aqua-Glo) for 8 hours per day (automatic timer). I’ll get to the more significant water parameters shortly.
A couple of days after getting the fish into the new tank, my girlfriend brought home a fourth clown loach and a second snail. A couple of times during that first week, I tested the water to verify that my plan of transferring water and filter media to cycle the tank had worked. I didn’t detect any ammonia or nitrite, so I decided that it would be okay to add some new fish. Thus, we picked up the 8 cardinal tetras and the three kuhlis (this was about ten days ago).
One morning last week, one of the cardinals started thrashing around on the gravel for no apparent reason. When we got home from work, he was gone (read: assumed dead). Thinking that my “tank conversion plan” wasn’t as airtight as I’d hoped, I did some more tests. This time, I detected the presence of ammonia (not much more than a presence though – maybe 1 ppm). I hadn’t yet installed the airstone in the new tank, so I realized that this might have been a factor. This past Saturday, we installed the airstone and added some Cycle (which contains nitrifying bacteria). Also worthy of noting, I treated for ick a couple of times (once shortly before the kuhlis were introduced, once shortly after). And it was Sunday night that the eggs appeared; Monday morning they were gone. So essentially, I only had the kuhlis for eight or nine days before they laid eggs. I’m not sure the fact they laid eggs is more a reflection of my tank or the tank at the LFS.
Anyway, having said all that, here are the characteristics of my water:
PH: 7.5 Temp 79F Hardness 110 ppm Substrate gravel (small, smooth and round) Plants plastic only Food 3 times per day: livebearer food, betta flakes (color enhancing),
river shrimp (which I powder), sinking tablets for the loaches,
freeze-dried blood worms I’m at work now, so if anyone would like more information on the food (manufacturer, ingredients, etc.) let me know and I can post it later.
As I said, since I haven’t had the kuhlis for very long, I didn’t notice any “fat fish” in the day or so before I saw the eggs nor did I detect any abnormal behavior (I don’t even think I’m qualified to define normal behavior yet). I really enjoy the kuhlis; they’re quickly becoming my favorites.
Hopefully, this entire scenario won’t have to be duplicated to ensure success, but I included everything I felt could be relevant here.
By the way, as I mentioned, the eggs were gone the next day. I am assuming they were eaten. Is it conceivable that they hatched and the fry is hiding somewhere? That would be cool.
Anyway, that’s about it. Any questions or comments are more than welcome. Thanks for responding so quickly everyone.
Pete
