Loaches Online Forum

Oooh. I think there's a big birthday coming up soon !

I thought I would just share some great success I have have feeding my clowns with an angling feeder (or swimfeeder as we call them in the UK).
I am trying to feed up my CLs but there are a lot of other midwater fish in the tank which will eat a lot of the food intended for the clowns.
Anyway, I ...

Those are some chunky loaches !!

OK, the story is this ...... I xreated a small family of 5 clowns about 15 months ago, and have been gently helping them to become happy, healthy well-adjusted members of society ever since.
The problems were twofold. Firstly, getting them to eat was difficult, and that was the subject of a ...

That's great you found an easy to feed food for your clowns. What brand is it? A food greeting & frenzy is always fun!

It can be fun to offer a special food treat sometimes. I do it a couple hours before a big water change but not often anymore, too messy.


The pellets are Vitalis 1mm tropical ...

Well, sometimes there's no accounting for tastes in people or in clown loaches, LOL. I would maybe try once more with the mussels but for a shorter time frame before you remove it...I like that you keep your clowns a tiny bit cool but that can have an effect too. Just another area you might tweek ...

I saw there were cysts on the clown loach gall bladders in the study. I didn't see if it said how many fish showed them or how many in any 1 loach. I wonder if that may be a part of "skinny" disease & why some diverse treatments seem to help sometimes but not consistantly. Wormers, antibiotics ...

Many thanks to RedShark1 and NancyD for your comments on this thread and my apologies for going MIA for a while.

I did actually originally treat the loaches with flubendazole twice, and (since my original post) have now treated twice with levamisole. So now I hope I can consider the tank pretty ...

I have never treated my fish for parasites other than the Ich/Whitespot they had shortly after purchase. This was their only ailment.

My understanding is they are routinely treated by the wholesalers before export.


Thats interesting. The "internet wisdom" that I have often read elsewhere is ...

Hi hamfist I see we have spoken before a while ago! :lol:

Well what I will say is that you appear to be keeping them well to me.

What may give solace is that I can tell you they do change their behaviour over time, perhaps many times.

You can make many small changes which help.

I keep mine ...

Dear Loach forum, I approach you for advice and help, as I have tried everything with my shoal of 6 clowns. THey are all between 3 and 4 inches, and seem reasonably healthy. None look desperately skinny, but the big problem is that I just can't get them enthused about eating. They will eat some ...

Sorry to derail temporarily but, Redhark1, just how big (and old) is that enormous boesmani rainbow in your pics ? It looks almost as big as the clowns.

Lots of "anti-gravel" posts here but is it the size of the gravel or the sharpness of it which will damage the barbels ? My experience keeping a range of barbelled fish over smooth gravel is that I have never had a fish develop any type of barbel damage/infection.
Unfortunately, so much of the ...

Thanks all for the replies. Seem slike I just need to be patient.

I was actually encouraged last night as I saw significantly more of them than before during the evening. It is pretty awesome watching them graze around the tank.

Hi everyone, my first post here !

2 weeks ago I was fortunate enough to pick up four 6-7" clown loaches at a very reasonable price.
They have gone in my 150G with a couple of small cichlids and a few swordtails and rainbowfish (so nothing to threaten them).

The issue is that I am hardly getting to ...