clown loach, blue-green and tank cycle

To: aquatic-plants at actwin_com
Subject: clown loach, blue-green and tank cycle
From: KB Koh <KB_Koh at ccm_ipn.intel.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 95 08:48:00 PDT
>From: David Randall <76535.2776 at compuserve_com>
> Subject: Re: bad fish (particularly Clown Loaches)

> In general, I have had no trouble with Clown Loaches in my planted tanks
>except for one extremely aggravating exception... Whenever my Anubias flower,
>they _immediately_ attack the flower as soon as it is open and devour it!.

When I first bought the clown loaches, they did not attack any plants in the 
first two week. It then started to attack new tender leaves of E. Osiris and 
broken its main vein (the one continue from petiole). They did not attack 
anything else until I brought in E.Opacus(?), E.Quadricostatus and a small red 
lettuce-like plant. They punch holes all over E.Opacus leaves and almost 
completely destroyed the red plant. I get rid of the clown before it further 
damage my Quadricostatus (a plant that I had been searching for 2 months!) BTW, 
these clowns use their mouth to punch those holes.


>From: George Booth <booth at hpmtlgb1_lvld.hp.com>
>Generally, BG large can indicate:

>. good water quality
>. bad water quality
>. low light
>. high light

These blue-green only grow on two-sides of my the tank, those facing toward the 
windows. My guess is they are getting too long light especially daylight. Me 
think need to cover those sides up in the morning.

>> Use the "only put in what they consume in 5 minutes" rule.

>Unless you have Rainbowfish. of course.  They can eat quite a bit in
>20 seconds.

and also Danios. They gobble up in seconds and come back for more, could feed 
them forever if not careful.

>From: "John Y. Ching" <jyching at watnow_uwaterloo.ca>

>I was under the impression that cycling a tank takes a month or more. Is my
>tank already cycled? If so, do plants really help to speed up cycling this
>much. I also used Hagen's Cycle additive in the beginning but am not sure

my tank cycled in less than 3 weeks. I think this happen if you have only a few 
fishes in a big tank with plants. In my 50gal, I started with 4 black mollies (2
died from ich after a day) and add 4 Zebra Danios a couple of days later.

rgds..kbkoh