New Fish!

[CKutz]

i was really bored yesterday and decided to go to petsmart to see what they had in. also to check out plant prices because i'd really like to go planted.

it so happened that they had brown khuli's. Around here i never see the regular khuli's so i decided to get a few. I've been interested in getting some for awhile. I also picked up 4 ghost shrimp for the heck of it.
I've currently got them in a 10 gallon quarantine tank.
I only got 3 khuli's though..because i don't particularly trust petsmart anymore. So i wanted to see if these make it. Was that foolish though? should i go get 3 more? they are going to be going into my 10 gal, which has 1 female betta (should be rehomed soon), 6 harlequin rasbora, and 1 cherry barb. i'm hoping to get a 15 gallon tank soon.

I was also thinking about buying these khuli's on aquabid, they 10 myersi, with free shipping. but the price will probably get out of my budget. I have a 30 gal. that I could put 5 in, and the other 5 in my 10.
does anyone know if regular khuli's and brown khuli's will hang out together? haha. because the brown is a little boring, so i'd like the more colorful ones. but even the huge lfs i prefer to go to doesn't have khulis. so i went on impulse and got these brown ones.

is there anything special i should do for them while their in the Qtank?

 

[CKutz]

bump

 

[Sean W.]

Brown kuhli loaches don't look any where near as good as regular kuhli loaches do...



But I don't see why brown and regular kuhli's wouldn't co-exsist....

I think 3 in a 10 gallon would be fine, don't think you have anything to worry about...


Also, if your " huge LFS " is any good or cares about its customers, you should be able to politly request that they get kuhlis and they should get em'. I ask for thinks from my LFS all the time, I asked for yoyo loaches, my hill stream loach, my gold gourami and my Dwarf puffers back when I had a DP tank...


Good luck

 

[Jallen]

I have 5 normal kuhli loaches and 5 brown kuhli loaches. They all coexist fine and love sitting under my mopani wood.

They take up barely any space and have little bio load.
I used to have 5 in a 15 gallon.

They are one of my favorite fish
They are great to watch, 100% peaceful and sometimes pretty funny.

Mine all bunch up together under stuff and then one tries to get out and ends up having to wiggle through and push all the others around, plus covering them with sand.
They also start chewing on my bottom feeder pellets out of my plecos mouth, much to my plecos annoyance.

They like places to hide under and will actually be seen more if hiding places are provided (won't dig because they feel secure)
They also love plants and will eat debris around the roots.
You will see them flying around the front of the tank to begin with, and eventually they will stop doing it. This is normal.

I'm sure you will enjoy them.

 

[Bebobb]

It is probally just a different color strain of them. You could have 3 regular and 3 brown. I have read wherre if they are kept in larger groups that you will see them more often, so if you think that they are boring, get more, and they might not be so boring.

 

[saltynay]

They are not colour morphs khulis are made up of many species about 12 if memory serves look up on loaches guide according to body shape. They all coexist happily and having many makes them feel secure,they don't necessarily shoal although they do play games with each other.

 

[CKutz]

thanks for the tip about requesting them from the lfs. because the ones on aquabid quickly got out of my budget as i thought they would.

these things are so odd haha. i guess they are still in the "where am i?!?!" stage..because they are zipping around a lot. but i barely had the light on yesterday, and just let my room light light up the tank, and they came out a lot then. today i turned the tank light on and they didn't hide.

fed some frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp. i saw one of them eating some. i'm kinda guessing there still too worked up about the new tank to eat much..but maybe they'll dig around more later on. they seem more concerned with swimming around spastically then looking for food.

i was reading some posts about them last night..saltynay did you say your browns are more active then the others? i thought someone said that...thought it was odd, but interesting.

one of the shrimp died..not sure why. i don't think it was a loach though, they don't seem to bother the shrimp at all.

 

[saltynay]

My black khulis (java loach) are more then my albino corys which is strange as black khulis are known to be nervous and hesitant and albino corys are mad men swimming everywhere. My normal striped khulis are much more subdued and dig a lot.

 

[CKutz]

hmm. interesting. i hope i like these guys...i really like the way that most loaches are always rummaging around looking for food. i have yoyos in my 30 gal, and just love them. i don't like fish like danios that are just alllll over the place constantly...it seems like these khulis are pretty calm when i don't have the light on...they seem comfortable when the light from my room is the only thing lighting up the tank. if i turn the tank light on then they go wild haha

i contacted my lfs, and they said they don't get khuli's in (for the online sales) because of their extremely poor survival rate. they said sometimes they'll get them into the retail store (which is what i would be interested in) but it's only occasionally. but i got added to notification list anyways

 

[CKutz]

is there a specific food they prefer?

they don't seem like really ravenous eaters. my yoyos are like a pack of wolves when you put in something for them. i think the khulis eventually ate some of the frozen stuff i put in. and i've seen one casually munching on a shrimp pellet from today..but they don't get too excited about it. normal? or just not settled in well enough yet?

 

[saltynay]

Mine love bloodworms. I feed them flake food, catfish pellets, bloodworm pellets, algae wafers and as a treat fresh veges, live daphnia, live bloodworm, live mosquito larvae. They never seem to get particularly excited but live bloodworms gets the most activity out of the black khulis the striped ones only venture out when evening lights are on (room lights on, tank lights off).

 

[CKutz]

alright cool, thanks
wow i wish i had that kind of variety haha

 

[saltynay]

Well its only 4 things in packets and by doing variety you don't use as much of each of them. The live food is just tubs outside which I leave alone sitting in the sun after they are algae ridden I initiate the colonies with a bit of old live food from the bottom of the packet bought from my LFS. I also have some frozen blood worms which I feed every so often aswell as the live bloodworm has quite low yields.

 

[CKutz]

it's a packet containing the live critters? do you feed them anything then?
doesn't sound too bad..doubt the family and roomies would be thrilled haha

 

[saltynay]

Your LFS will have live food in a fridge I bought a packet of mixed live food containing brine shrimp, daphnia and bloodworms. Once the packet was nearly empty I dropped the remaining food into a tub that I had left outside to seed with algae the food thrived and all I have to do is dip my net into the tubs and I scoop out my own fresh live food in relatively clean water. They survive simply off the algae in the tub which is living off the sun and occasionally I drop a flake in there to produce some ammonia.