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Passport
- Family
- Loaches and Botia
- Grows to
- 6.5 cm (2.6")
- Lives
- 8–10 years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Intermediate
- Swims
- On the bottom
- Keep
- In a group of 6 or more
- Water
- 20–24 °C (68–75 °F)
Vietnam
Care requirements
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On record for Hillstream Loach: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 76 L / 20.0 US gal
- pH 6–7.5
- Hardness 1–10 dGH
- Diet algae grazer
- Tank length 75 cm minimum
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Hillstream loaches look like miniature stingrays and live like nothing else in the hobby. The body is flattened into a disc, the fins spread wide and flat, and the whole animal works as a suction pad that grips bare rock in water moving fast enough to sweep most fish away.
They come from shallow, cold, oxygen-saturated headwater streams full of boulders and rapids, and there are essentially no plants there. Everything they need follows from that: cold water, ferocious flow, hard surfaces and sunlight-grown algae.
The result is that a hillstream loach is a bad fit for a normal tropical community tank and a superb fish for a river tank built specifically for it. Buying one for a warm, still, planted setup is the mistake almost everyone makes.
Tank setup
Build your hillstream loaches a river, not an aquarium. Turnover many times an hour, powerheads adding to the filter return, and a long tank rather than a deep one.
Keep it cool. They sit at the temperate end of tropical and they suffer at the temperature most community tanks run at, because warm water simply holds less of the oxygen they need.
Floor it with smooth rocks, water-worn pebbles and sand, and light it hard. Strong lighting grows the algae film that feeds them, and unlike almost every other tank you want that film everywhere except the front glass.
Fit a tight lid. They climb glass, genuinely and easily, and an open tank loses them.
Avoid new driftwood. Fresh wood leaches tannins that tint the water and cut the light your algae depends on.
Feeding
Hillstream loaches graze biofilm and algae off rock, and that has to be the backbone of their diet rather than a supplement.
Grow it deliberately. Keep a second container of rocks under a bright light — a bucket on a windowsill is enough — and rotate stones into the tank as they green up. In a community with other algae eaters this becomes necessary rather than optional.
Offer vegetable-based sinking foods, blanched greens and gel foods bound with spirulina alongside. They take small live and frozen food opportunistically.
Avoid: assuming they'll live on what a community tank grows. That assumption starves more of these fish than anything else.
Filtration and flow
Over-filter, then add more flow on top. This is the one fish in this catalogue where a strong current is a requirement rather than a preference.
Leave a filter sponge exposed if you can. They graze it, and some keepers run an open sponge in the tank purely as a food source.
Never put them in a new tank. They need mature biofilm to eat and stable water to live in, and a fresh setup offers neither.
With plants
Hillstream loaches are safe with plants and their natural streams have almost none, so planting is for your benefit rather than theirs.
Choose tough species that attach to hardscape and handle strong flow — java fern, anubias and crinum are the reliable ones. Anubias leaves collect algae, which is a bonus here rather than a nuisance.
Don't let planting block the current. Flow across the rockwork is the point of the layout.
Health
They're hardy in the right tank and decline steadily in the wrong one, which makes diagnosis confusing. A thin, sunken belly means starvation, not disease.
Watch for a fish hanging in midwater or gasping at the surface. In a species built to grip rock, that means the oxygen has fallen — usually because the tank got warm.
Sudden losses often follow a filter failure. Their oxygen demand leaves no margin.
Breeding
They spawn in home tanks occasionally, usually by accident in a well-run river setup, and deliberate breeding is uncommon.
The pattern that seems to work is a cool, very well-oxygenated tank with a sand and gravel bed, where the fish bury eggs among the substrate. Cooler water changes appear to trigger it, mimicking meltwater.
The fry need the same thing as the adults, only smaller: clean fast water and a surface carpeted in algae to graze. That last requirement is why so few people raise them.
Tank mates
Avoid12
- Assassin Snail Hillstream Loach is not safe with Assassin Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
- Bladder Snail Hillstream Loach is not safe with Bladder Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
- Common Goldfish Common Goldfish is not safe with Hillstream Loach: common goldfish and loaches and botia are a bad pairing.
- Discus Discus is not safe with Hillstream Loach: discus and loaches and botia are a bad pairing.
- Fancy Goldfish Fancy Goldfish is not safe with Hillstream Loach: fancy goldfish and loaches and botia are a bad pairing.
Only with care32
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid is noticeably larger than Hillstream Loach and may bully it or outcompete it at feeding time.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid is noticeably larger than Hillstream Loach and may bully it or outcompete it at feeding time.
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Hillstream Loach is peaceful.
- Amano Shrimp Hillstream Loach is a risk to Amano Shrimp: loaches and botia and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
- Bamboo Shrimp Hillstream Loach is a risk to Bamboo Shrimp: loaches and botia and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 60 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 4 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.