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I have a pair of cown loaches in 1 of my thee tanks, and they're extremely happy showing all there colour and amazingly push colourde chips of opal into a cave where they both seem to sleep in the daytime.
I was wondering how you can sex them and if they can be bred in aquaria?
:%):%):%)

Breeding in the home aquaria is relatively rare, I think. Anyone feel free to correct me, as I'm not positive of this. Sexing is pretty hard as well without taking apart the fish.

They get very large, and are not mature until that time. They have been bred in captivity, but not an easy thing, and done rarely. As for in the aquarium, I have not heard any accounts of this happening.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Clown loaches only get about 8-9" in the home aquarium (Unless you have a 1000 gallon or more tank.


It is VERY hard to sex them (some even say that it is impossible) and they have never bread in the home aquarium.

(If you are refering to the one where the clown loach had eggs, it died, and it kept the eggs inside, the owner cut the loach open after it died and discovered the eggs in there)

http://www.loaches.com/loachbreeding.html

This is one of several incidents.

Eek Vic, where did you read about an owner cutting open his clown loach? And why would he do that????

Question, ghostfish, when you say you have a pair of clowns, do you mean you ONLY have two in the whole tank???

-Formerly known as the Ferretfish

Oh, yeah.] Clown loaches should be kept in groups of at least three, though more is always better. As they get pretty large, they need to be kept in a large tank. What size do you have yours in, and with what fish?

What the others have said about sexing and spawning is correct. Clown loaches are very hard to sex, and very hard to spawn.

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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."

Beware of adding more clowns to an already established aquarium with clowns in it - I had two 5 inchers or so, and wanted to add more but no matter HOW large the ones to add are, they will usually not get along with the original clowns...

It's far better IMO to keep it with 2 thad add more at this point! And mine did extremely well as a couple.. in fact they quite simply outgrew the tank!

-Jeff

Clownygirl, from memory the clown loaches died from some other cause (I think it was an unfortunate accident with a filter but I might be mistaken). When the owner did a post-mortem examination she discovered eggs in one of them. I think she then preserved the loaches somehow for future reference.

I didn't bookmark the article because I found it rather disturbing to read and even more distrbing to look at the pictures

wehtu is right.

Also, i dont believe that article that was posted above.

It seems so fake, and not acually what happens in real life (since alot of things described DONT happen when clowns breed in the wild)

EDIT* like the article says the fish were living in 86F water.

After that temp, a fish starts to get VERY stressed, and has a HIGH chance of dieing.

Last edited by victimizati0n at 27-Nov-2004 06:34

I introduced at least 6 more but overtime they Stressed them by chasing them away vigouressly from the cave.
so I removed them as they're e to ich. highly unusual behavior.

as long as you keep good water quality, they wolnt get ich.

We have 15 year old clowns, and they never got ich.

Clown loaches can be e to ich, especially when they are first introduced to a new tank. The problem is, it's tough to treat them for it. As they are 'naked' (very small-scaled) fish, they can't handle as large a dose of meds as most other fish. Care must be taken to ensure that an ich-infested clown loach does not get overpowered by the ich treatment.

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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."

quattroboi

Beware of adding more clowns to an already established aquarium with clowns in it - I had two 5 inchers or so, and wanted to add more but no matter HOW large the ones to add are, they will usually not get along with the original clowns...

Again I must be doing something wrong my very small CLs have always got on well with the larger ones. They have their own areas to go to.

As far as sexing unless you see them breeding in the wild, I dont think there is a 100% accurate way of sexing them.

Keith

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Keith, my small clowns dont get along with my big ones.

But the biggest of the small is smaller than the big clown loaches fin.