Is moving water necessary?

I was reading an article about loaches and it said they like moving water like a power head making a current? Is this essential to their growth or is water movement from the filter enough? Then it said you need 12x the amount of gallons your tank is to keep the water clean. I have a planted tank and just tested the water and it's good.

 

What kind of loaches do you have?

What are your water parameters (pH, temp, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates)?

For HOBs, 8-10x is recommended; 3-7x for canisters after media is in the canister.

 

I have clown loaches water temp is 78, pH is 6.8 and everything else is low I don't know the exact number

 

What kind of filtration do you have on the tank? What GPH are your filters?

Can you get exact readings?

 

A marineland 350 HOB filter. 350 GPH. Nitrate is less than 10ppm and nitrate is 0

 

And what size tank?

 

It's a 60 gallon I know they get big I'm getting a bigger tank when I get a house next summer

 

I'd probably throw another filter on there for good measure. I think that would be good enough until you can upgrade next year.

 

Yikes, I just got a shock looking at your stock list in your profile!

Looks like you're in for a big expansion in the future.

I keep Clown Loaches with Congo Tetra dithers in a 110 gal and my turnover is 7.5 x capacity as rated by the pumps. Any higher and my Clown Loaches appear uncomfortable and don't lounge about in the open any more and stay in their caves.

I include a venturI on my biggest powerhead as their breathing rate is then noticeably slower.

I found that aquaclear powerheads seem very quiet and reliable.

I tried some cheaper models that rattled and gave me problems.

So these are a couple of tips I hope are helpful.

 

Thanks for the tips where do you keep the power head in the tank does it go at the top? I also need to update my profile most of that stuff has been moved out of the tank besides the loaches 2 pictus cats, shovelnose and gouarmi

 

Cool. Yes I position the powerheads at the top. This is because they drive my undergravel filter so they sit on the uplift tubes.

Yes, old tech I know but very effective and great for the Loaches as I'm not growing plants with them.

I have two powerheads which circulate the water around the tank so there is a current running (anticlockwise in my case).

Been doing it this way for over 20 years now.

 

So I bought the marine land 400 maxI jet which can switch between a 110 power head and a 500 circulation pump but which one do I use. Is the 500 GPH to much?

 

What I have done is combine the gallons per hour of all my pumps and divide it by the gallons of tank volume to get a figure for the turnover in number of tank volumes per hour.

Between 5 and 10 is recommended for Clown Loaches. I'd aI'm for something between these figures and see how it goes.