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Today I bought a couple loaches called "Peppered Dojo Loaches" for $3 each. I'm pretty sure they are a Cobitis species rather than a Dojo Loach variety.

One of them has two bold, dark, and relatively thick stripes running down its sides. The other one has a similar pattern to a Peppered Cory with two distinct spots towards the front of its body. I'm not sure if they are the same species or not.

I'll try to get pictures of them later if I can find my camera. Has anyone heard of these "Peppered Dojo Loaches"? I'm assuming they are a temperate species, but I have them in my tropical community tank right now.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I *think* we just got something with that name at work. I'll double check that tomorrow. I don't remember any stripes on them, the peppered cory description sounds more like them. I'll see what they look like.

The owner is cheap, so they're in an unheated tank. They don't move around very much, they've been sitting on the substrate.

They either came from 5D or Seagrest, if that helps any.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Is this one of them Natalie?

And how about this for your Peppered Cory lookalike loach?



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

The first one sort of matches the striped one, but mine doesn't have a stripe on the face and the body stripes are thicker. The second one resembles the mottled one in coloration, only the head is much too flat.

So far the closest match I can find is Cobitis taenia, but even that isn't exact. It is possible, however, that the species just has a lot of variation.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I managed to get some photos of the mottled one. The striped one is still nowhere in sight.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Here is another close-up of the mottled one.



And here is the only halfway-decent picture I could get of the striped one. The color of the fishes' back has darkened a lot (when I saw it in the store the color must have been washed out from the stress), so now it looks like it only has one dark stripe on the body.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Apparently they are Lepidocephalichthys guntea. I can't really tell the difference between Lepidocephalichthys and Cobitis though... A lot of the species look exactly the same to me.

The generic name means "scale-head fish" I believe, which is weird because I thought loaches didn't have scales on the head.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I checked out our loaches, and they seem similar to your peppered loaches but aren't the same thing. Different head shape, different whiskers, and they don't have as high a body.

Kinda neat fish. I'm not much for loaches though.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."