Loach hanging out inside the heater. Is this bad?

SilersAngryMeow

I bought 3 yoyo loaches a week ago, and everything seems to be going well with them, except for one odd thing: one of them loves to hide inside my Rena SmartHeaters. He swims into the top and hangs out down by the bottom. (It's kind of funny to see, he looks like he's in fish prison! I wish I had a picture to post) I'm not sure if he just likes the seclusion, or if he likes that it's warm in there (I'm guessing it must be)

My question is this: should I be worried about this? Is there something in the tank threatening to him, or is the water perhaps too cold? (It's around 78 degrees). He's not in there all the time, and I don't really bother to force him out unless it's dinner time. I'm kinda thinking about fitting the top hole with some sort of screen to keep him out, but I'm not sure if it's necessary or worth the time.

Here's a picture of the heater, for those unfamiliar with it.

aunt kymmie

Loaches are great at squeezing into the tinest spaces and then getting back out again. It always amazes me. If it was my tank (and it's not!) I would cap of the space to keep him out of there. My line of thinking is that if the heater were to malfunction he'd be toast. Not that your heater will malfunction but I always try to look at things at every possible angle. I'm glad you got more yoyos. The more the merrier!

SilersAngryMeow

That's a good point. I purposefully got 2 smaller wattage heaters instead of one monster one in case of heater malfunction, but if a fish were in there while it malfunctioned it would probably be the end of him. I wonder what to use to block off the hole? Hmm.

So, about the new yoyos - I bought the new 3 as friends for the one lonely loach remaining from my old brood (poor guy had been looking really lonesome). For about 36 hours they carried on and swam around and everything seemed great. Then, Saturday, the old loach up and died. Why??? Stress? He was blemish free, and the water has been perfect (0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate, pH stable at around 7.6). This aquarium has really been a tank of horrors for me ever since I got it up and running. :(

aunt kymmie

Huh. How odd. We can definitely rule out old age because we know he was nowhere near old age. I would doubt it was stress as having new buddies should have made him comfortable and more at home. With perfect water parameters and his young age it's hard for me to come up with an idea of what could have caused his early demise. Odd, for sure.

willow

oh no,how sad
are your water reading right though ?

SilersAngryMeow

I'm pretty sure they're right. It's the API liquid test kit. I was thinking the same thing, so I also tested my tap pH and it's 8.0, just the way the city says it should be. The tank is planted, so I'm not surprised that everything is zero.

Something's going on though. I've lost a lot of fish in the past couple of months :(

SilersAngryMeow

I know, right? And I never did figure out why the first 2 died (that was, what, a month ago?) I also lost 3 harlequin rasboras and one danio. How on earth does a danio die? Those guys are supposed to be unkillable.

Like I said, tank of horrors. :(

willow

i had a tank like that........i called it "the tank of doom"
don't matter what i did,i lost fish all the time.
i completly drained it and packed it away for an age.
but now it's got the Fire belly toads in there and i hope history won't repeat it's self.

SilersAngryMeow

Oh man, I don't like the sound of that. I've invested so much time and money into getting this set up! I don't want to pack it away!!

It's crazy, the fish are all eating normal, swimming around, not looking stressed or thin or agitated or anything and then (surprise!) I wake up to a dead body. Can it be algae? That's the only thing about this tank that seems unusual: the amount of algae I still get. I am prone to getting hair algae on the dwarf baby tears, some kind of brown algae on parts of the sand substrate, and that green powdery algae that grows on the glass. I clean it all off once a week during water change, but it always grows back.

I hadn't been too worried about it, since the fish all act normally. But maybe the deaths are a sign?

willow

noooooooooooo i don't mean shut it down,
that's just what i did with mine,it was mainly slate in there and plastic plants.
don't give up.