Night time, day time, bright lights, and training…

[Magnum Man]

So, tonight I noticed an interesting thing about my Hillstream loaches… when you read about keeping them. It’s often mentioned they like bright lights… but I’m finding they don’t like bright lights, they like the results of bright light, the algae and biofilms… but mine also don’t seem to be nocturnal… but instead, are very trainable… I always feed them between 9:00 and 10:00 pm, and there is no dimming of lights yet, only that the backgrounds light up, before the main light dims…

You could look at that tank, between 10:00am, and 3:00pm, and see one or two of the Hillstream’s, and all 5 Panda Garra’s… but between 9:00 pm, and until the lights go out completely, see 30 or 40 loaches… they are everywhere, in full force, waiting for food to start falling from the sky…

Later this week, I’ll be moving the larger non Hillstream fish from this tank, allowing the Denison barbs to move into tank boss position, and greatly reduce the bioload, and allow me to add a few more Hillstream’s… I swear several of the suppliers I buy from cater to my weakness for these fish… some blue tail zebras arrive on Tuesday, this next week…

 

[Magnum Man]

And I see they just got in some spotted blue tails

 

[Magnum Man]

So, at 1st light this morning, I can see 2 Hillstream’s, both adults, one Gold Ring, and one Vietnamese lizard… so they clearly are not nocturnal, if I can see only about 5 % of them

 

[emeraldking]

This might be very interesting to other hillstream loach keepers. It does shine a light on a different perspective of keeping them. A different experience makes the hobby much more interesting.