rm
Passport
- Family
- Loaches and Botia
- Grows to
- 10 cm (3.9")
- Lives
- 10+ years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Intermediate
- Swims
- On the bottom
- Keep
- In a group of 5 or more
- Water
- 21–26 °C (70–79 °F)
MalaysiaIndonesia
Care requirements
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On record for Kuhli 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 3.5–7
- Hardness 0–8 dGH
- Diet micropredator
- Tank length 60 cm minimum
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
An eel-shaped loach that spends most of the day buried and most of the night working the substrate. New keepers routinely decide theirs have died — they vanish for weeks at a time, then all turn up at once at dusk.
They're social in a way that's easy to miss. A single kuhli hides permanently, while a group of six or more gets visibly bolder and will come out in daylight. The difference is dramatic, and it's the one thing that most changes whether you ever see them.
They're scaleless, which matters when it comes to medication.
Tank setup
Give them sand, or the smoothest rounded gravel you can find. They burrow, and sharp substrate abrades them — that's not a preference, it's the difference between a healthy fish and a damaged one.
Give them somewhere to disappear: caves, wood, leaf litter, dense planting. A kuhli with nowhere to hide is a stressed kuhli, and you'll paradoxically see it less rather than more.
Seal the gaps. They're thin, determined, and they'll find their way into a filter intake or out through the hole you cut in the lid for a cable.
Feeding
They're substrate feeders that take small live and frozen foods — bloodworm, daphnia, brine shrimp — along with sinking pellets. They won't compete at the surface and they won't come up for flake.
Feed after lights out. In a community tank a daytime feed is long gone before they emerge, and a slowly starving kuhli is easy to miss because it's never visible anyway.
Avoid: relying on leftovers. They get stocked as a "cleanup" fish, which they aren't — they need feeding in their own right.
Filtration and flow
Keep it gentle to moderate and well oxygenated. They come from soft, slow, tannin-stained water.
Guard the intake. A thin fish and an unguarded pipe have a predictable ending.
Botanicals and leaf litter suit them, both for the cover and for the softer, stained water they colour up in.
With plants
Entirely safe. They burrow in open substrate rather than through root systems, and heavy planting is straightforwardly good for them — the more cover you give them, the more often you'll actually see them.
Health
Being scaleless changes what they tolerate, though not in one predictable direction. Some parasite treatments name loaches and still expect the whole amount; others tell you plainly to keep away. Read which of the two you are holding rather than halving it as a matter of course, since a weak course can fail and leave you treating twice.
They're prone to skin damage from sharp substrate, which then turns into a bacterial infection. The substrate is the fix, not the medication.
Because they hide, you'll usually notice problems late. A kuhli out in the open during the day, not moving, is worth investigating rather than being pleased about.
Breeding
Rare in aquaria and mostly accidental. They're egg scatterers that spawn among plants near the surface, and the green eggs usually get eaten within a day.
The reports of success involve mature groups, very soft acidic water and dense floating cover. It isn't something to plan around.
Tank mates
Avoid14
- Least Killifish Kuhli Loach grows to 10 cm against Least Killifish at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Scarlet Badis Kuhli Loach grows to 10 cm against Scarlet Badis at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Assassin Snail Kuhli Loach is not safe with Assassin Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
- Bladder Snail Kuhli Loach is not safe with Bladder Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
- Common Goldfish Common Goldfish is not safe with Kuhli Loach: common goldfish and loaches and botia are a bad pairing.
Only with care32
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Kuhli Loach is peaceful.
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid is aggressive and Kuhli Loach is peaceful.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid is aggressive and Kuhli Loach is peaceful.
- Amano Shrimp Kuhli Loach is a risk to Amano Shrimp: loaches and botia and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
- Bamboo Shrimp Kuhli 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. 2 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.