kuhli loaches in 10 gallon?
Wendie,
While you may keep 10 kuhli’s in a 10G planted tank and you may have been lucky over the past several years, it’s simply NOT good for the fish and I’m not sure if you should be advising others to do the same.
You’re talking 40 inches of fish in a 10G tank. And kuhli’s get much fatter than neon tetra’s or galaxy rasbora’s and I would never recommend putting 40 of either of them in a 10G tank.
The fish will almost certainly suffer from stunting unless you are doing very, very frequent PWC’s and run lots of chemical filtration. As far as I know, plants do not utilize the hormones excreted by the fish but maybe they do. Every reputable profile I’ve looked at for kuhli loaches recommend a minimum of 20G for a small shoal of at least three fish but also would say it’s much better to keep more than three.
As far as the regular kuhli’s or black kuhli’s, I have no clue what the store has in their tank. Another good reason why a store should put the scientific name on the labels. Black Kuhli’s are Pangio Oblonga whereas the more common Kuhli is Pangio Acanthophthalmus Kuhli. There are many other Pangio Kuhli Loaches that are similar in size/shape but have various solid dark colors. http://www.loaches.com/species-index/species-index (Scroll down to Pangio…)
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
