What do loaches eat? Detailed feeding guide

The loach is a species of fish in the family Gastromyzontidae, genus Vanmanenia, and likes to live a benthic life in streams and rivers with gravelly bottoms and swift currents. It is relatively common in Guangxi. So what do loaches eat?

1. What do loaches eat?

In the wild, loaches eat algae on rocks, while captive-bred loaches eat bloodworms, algae tablets, sinking tablets and so on. Loaches have high requirements for their growing environment and like to cling beneath rocks in fast-flowing water, so they are difficult to keep and hard to raise for long periods.

2. How do you keep loaches?

1. When keeping thick-lipped Vanmanenia in an aquarium, try to mimic the environment of a mountain stream as much as possible in the aquascaping and fish stocking. As for choosing the tank volume, because thick-lipped Vanmanenia is quite small, you do not need to use a large aquarium. Unless you prefer stream-style aquascaping and use thick-lipped Vanmanenia as a supporting player to bring out the liveliness of the whole aquascape, in which case that is a different matter. For the tank's filtration system, you can choose the filtration that suits you based on your own experience and conditions.

2. You need a water pump with a relatively large flow rate so that the water in the tank can flow faster and high-quality aquarium water quality can be maintained. At the same time, you can install a wave maker in the tank to mimic the native environment as much as possible. However, the power of the wave maker should not be too high; it only needs to provide a relatively gentle water flow.

3. Place more flat, smooth stones in the tank and lay down substrate sand. The colors of the substrate sand and stones should mainly be dark.

4. You can place aquatic plants according to your preferences to increase ornamentality, but you can also mimic the native environment and place only stones.

5. The streams where thick-lipped Vanmanenia lives in its native habitat are mostly under forest canopy, where sunlight is not strong and does not last long, so choosing aquarium lighting is much simpler. If you are not growing plants, you can pair it with aquarium light tubes at will, just for everyday viewing.

6. The water temperature of mountain streams is relatively low, so in an aquarium-keeping environment, getting through summer becomes a difficult problem. In winter, even in some southern parts of China, where the water temperature drops below 10°C, thick-lipped Vanmanenia can get through the winter smoothly. But when summer arrives, water temperatures above 30°C become the loach's greatest enemy. This requires choosing a suitable cooling tool based on your own conditions.