Loaches for live sand tank

[Sonny Disposition]

Awhile back, Todd Crail, one of the NANFA people, wrote an article on adapting a marine fishkeeping technique to freshwater: a deep sand bed in a native fish tank. I've been intrigued by the idea for a long time.

http://www.pvas.com/articles/ultimate_n ... h_tank.pdf

It's not a native species tank. Rather, I'm looking for fish that would keep the sand turned over, to prevent detritus from accumulating.

It occurred to me that the group of Gymnogeophagus I've been keeping would be perfect for such an arrangent. It also occurred to me that fish that shuffle around on the bottom up would also work well. So in addition to a nice school of Corydoras paleatus, I was thinking some kind of sand-shifting loach would work well.

Todd suggested the horse face loach, because it buries itself in the sand. Since I like to grow crypts, I'm thinking something that buries itself might be detrimental to my minimally capable aquascaping. I'm hoping to grow some crypts. (Don't laugh. I like crypts.)

Do you folks have any other ideas for a candidate species? Something that's fairly peaceful, wouldn't pick on the cories, yet could stand up to the earth eaters if they got a little feisty? I'd prefer a mid sized to small species--not clowns. Although they're really cool, they just grow too big.

Thanks in advance for your insights.

[ddavila06]

i have weather loaches, they are really kool and used to bury more when i first got them, then the substrate cchanged to small rocks and now i changed again to ecocomplete. i had kulhi but they just kind of dissapear so i don't know what they do...i also had horse face and they did well until my gigantic pictus ate it then i also had yoyos and kubotai but too hyper, i also had one tiger stripe loach and was pretty good but dissapear (possibly the pictus again?)

[Sonny Disposition]

I've thought about weather loaches, actually. Do any of the loaches dig enough to disturb the plants?

I'm hoping to get some species that just keep the top of the sand agitated, to prevent detritus from building up too much but not so much that they disturb the crypts.

[ddavila06]

i don't think the weather loaches will disturb anyone, they are gracious swimmers and pose on top of most plants. i have five, no issues (and i really like crypts) in the other hand the yoyos made somewhat of a mess...

[magsdez]

We have 3 weather loaches in a 55 and they don't disturb the plants at all. Scott actually has 2 of them eating out of his hands. They are really cool. We also have 4 (soon to be 6) kubotais in the 75gal. They are an absolute riot and that's a heavely planted tank. They don't disturb the plants either and are fun to watch. If I recall right, the horseface loach gets very large, but Scott's done the research on that.

[Ltrepeter2000]

and the last time I was at SCALES they still had a tank of the weather loaches, but things are moving fast up there.