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To my delight, Capitol Aquarium in Sacramento has a whole huge tankful of dozens of our endangered little friend the Dwarf Loach (Botia sidthimunki), thereby apparently confirming that the Asians have finally found out how to breed the little buggers using hormones. (The store calls them "Checkerboard Loaches"; but there's at least one other kind of Loach sold under that name -- and these are very definitely sidthimunki.) At any rate, they've been there for about 3 months now, and (hormone-bred or not) seem extremely active and healthy (as well as all being full-grown down to the last fish). They're still pretty expensive -- $12.95 per fish -- but it now looks as though we no longer have to worry about this neat-looking little fish going extinct.

Bruce sorry to tell you I have just done a Google and some have been sold on line for at least four years.

They might now be breed in larger numbers enabling them to be sold at the LFS.

If it is a rare endagered fish that price seems very reasonable.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

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Well, that just pleases me more -- I had heard rumors about this, but nothing definite, and I hadn't done any really thorough search. There's a remarkable story at http://www.aquafriend.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=78 to the effect that we have an emergency fire sale at the London Zoo to thank for the fact that Asian fish wholesalers acquired a stock of Dwarf Loaches big enough to start breeding them. (And, yes, the little guys in the photos are what I saw.)

(Footnote: remove that semicolon from the middle of the URL above to get to the story. I can't seem to remove it using this site's "Edit" function, for some reason.)