My fish named "Nippy" for a reason... Lol wanting to try loaches~

[LugiaChan]

Hi there so this is a story and a question on my fish named Nippy.

The people at petsmart told me I could put a golden algae eater in my tank (LOL, wrong) and do just fine. Well, my betta doesn't like the color yellow on a fish so he constantly got at this poor algae eater. I returned it to the store after watching those two play chase all day and rescued him out of the tank.

I have owned a brown snail in the past, my betta fish honestly didn't care for it at all and ignored it completely.

Well, after that I decided to wonder if it was the movement or color or both that played a pictured in my fish nipping at things. XD I bought a golden snail and my betta fish nipped its antenna off :( but honestly my fish doesn't care about it anymore. And it doesn't have antennas showing anymore (likely hiding them away and prepared for the betta fish).


My thoughts are my fish thinks anything that moves is food - or he hates sharing his tank with anything in it. See, I trained him to eat off my fingers and my fingers move, meaning there's food. I've only had him for a month or so, so maybe it can be fixed unless he certainly just doesn't like sharing his tank with others or doesn't like fish in general.


Since I REALLY want Kuhli loaches in my tank I wanted to test something out. I thought about that looked like a Kuhli loach that would move around a bit... I went outside and grabbed a worm, washed it off, grabbed a clean sandwich bag, dropped it in and tied it up nice with my hands clean (obviously I dont want any ounce of germs from that touching my tank, I am very cleanly and careful as a person ^_^)... And I watched.

My fish nipped at it, thinking it was likely some food for it to eat like my fingers. However, after 5 or so minutes my fish got tired or bored of it and ventured off away. I moved the bag a little bit, but my fish would rather swim around the tank.


Now I wonder if I should try a small pleco perhaps? I am wondering if that would prove my fish just clearly doesn't like colors and would leave him alone, or if he'd leave anything brown alone all together. What a silly fish XD What do you recommend?


My tank is planted with one yellow snail right now and expecting more plants and I may upgrade to sand and cover my filter intake with sponge with lots of cleaning to prevent damage to my propeller~ <3 Thanks for all your help!

[thekoimaiden]

For both the kuhli loaches and the plecos, size of the tank matters. They both need a 20+ gal tank. Kuhlis also need sand as they are ravenous burrowers. If you have soft water go with kuhlis (all are wild-caught and need soft water to thrive). They are nocturnal, so your betta will hardly see them; they burrow, so if your betta decides to bother them they will disappear. I don't know much about the smaller species of pleco, tho. I'm more of a loach person.