16 inch Clown Loach

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Loachloach
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Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2012 10:11 pm

Re: 16 inch Clown Loach

Post by Loachloach » Sat Dec 10, 2016 3:52 pm

Hey redshark 1

Yes, unsuccessful breeding wise but valuable since it gives good information on clown loaches, which for some reason, considering their popularity, is pretty scarce out there..

You mentioned the shadowing ritual and I came to the exact same conclusion as yourself. I recently, a few weeks ago, observed my own clown loaches in this sort of ritual that wasn't just the common small loach stuck to a big loach. All my slender loaches were chasing my two large/fatter loaches, (assuming females) very vigorously and were also fighting amongst themselves in the mean time. It wasn't the case of them swimming happily in a group as they normally do when begging for food.... The two large ones were keeping away from the rest of the group by their own, sort of "labouring" , puffing from exhaustion when they were not being chased and looking nervous sort of...I've kept corydoras for years and that's exactly how the spawning starts and looks throughout, lots of males chasing females and fighting with each other to get the female first. The female(s) desperately tries to escape,,,just like with the clown loaches but in the end "submits" to the mating and a few seconds later lays the eggs....

Obviously for loaches it ends there, with the chasing...but it is striking how similar to corydoras spawning behaviour it looks...
So I think the shadowing behaviour is some sort of spawning behaviour....Mine only started shadowing recently enough and that's probably because apart from my large loach which I aqcuired 3 years ago at 5-6 inch which is now 8-9 inch, the rest are only small enough 4 years olds with the largest grown to 6-7 inch in that period of time(way larger than the rest of the group I got at exactly the same time) assumed its my second female apart from the large loach....So the shadowing/chasing starts when you've got a "large" enough loach which I think is most likely a matured enough female...

As for your loaches, you've done so great with them I can only hope I can do the same... Breeding wise, for yours it is not too late :D Yours are certainly in breeding age...We probably need to try to recreate the raining season in order for them to successfully spawn...They say that they do migrate too in order to spawn, very hard to re-create those conditions in fish tanks but even the hardest to spawn fish species have bred in aquaria...eventually.....Someone will figure it out one day...

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