Family: Balitoridae
A peaceful algivore balitoridae from South China (Hong Kong and Guangdong) — moderate care.
Pseudogastromyzon myersi of the family Balitoridae is an aquarium-kept Balitoridae. Peaceful and algivore; quality prepared foods with variety, it grows to 4.2–6 cm and prefers 18–26 °C water. Other Pseudogastromyzon species in our database include Pseudogastromyzon cheni, Pseudogastromyzon fasciatus, Pseudogastromyzon changtingensis.
Hillstream loaches are sensitive to shipping stress, warm water and ammonia spikes. Buy from sources that keep them cool and flowing, and only add them to a mature, stable tank.
They are close relatives with nearly identical care. P. myersi tends to be smaller with bolder reticulated patterning and comes from Hong Kong and Guangdong streams.
Yes — it is completely peaceful and the two make ideal cool-water, high-flow companions, though both will compete for the same algae wafers.
Most trade stock is wild-caught from Guangdong and Hong Kong streams, which makes quarantine and the choice of established tanks doubly important.
Easy with the right water, quick to die with the wrong water. It's a hillstream loach with three non-negotiables: cool temperatures (18–26 °C, ideally under 22), high oxygen, and strong current. Meet all three and it's a bulletproof glass cleaner — but let summer water pass 26 °C without adequate flow and it dies off one by one with no warning. That's the number-one failure scenario.
Early collections centered on Hong Kong and the streams around the Pearl River estuary, hence the name. It's distributed across the hill streams of the south China coast and belongs to a different lineage from Japanese sucker loaches or true hillstream loaches — despite the striking resemblance to a mini pleco, it's Balitoridae, no relation to Loricariidae.
Yes, and it's often more diligent than small plecos on glass. It grazes with a sucker mouth, spending all day pressed to glass, stone, and wood eating algae and biofilm. Two caveats: it eats algae, not fish waste, and once the glass is clean you must supplement algae wafers; at 4–6 cm it's efficient only in small to mid-size tanks.
Simulate a mountain stream: smooth cobblestones stacked into crevices and caves, strong current running through the rock pile, soft diffused light. Use fine pebble or creek sand — sharp edges abrade the abdominal sucker. The key is attachment surfaces: a bare glass tank actually unsettles it; rock and wood surfaces everywhere are its comfort zone.
60 L is the profile floor, but 80–120 L is the practical recommendation. It's small but oxygen-hungry and current-dependent; larger water holds temperature steady (higher summer safety). A small 60 L spikes dangerously in summer heat — bigger water plus a fan or chiller is the long-term answer.
Algae and biofilm are staples, but tank algae rarely sustain it long-term. Supplement: quality sinking algae wafers every other day, blanched spinach or pumpkin slices, and occasional frozen brine shrimp for protein. Hunger test: a hollow belly and glass-edge grazing all day means it's underfed.