Loaches Online Forum

how can you grow live plants in clown loach tank? My loaches eat everything I try to grow. Do I need CO2 to get the plants growing or what should I do? Can you suggest some good plants with them? And how should I fight algae? A few plants that I've got all have black leaves instead of being bright green...
I feed the loaches cucumber and spirulina tablets several timesa week.

anubias fern is all that survives in my tanks.

i dont have clowns, but i have yoyos ans striatas. java fern attatched to bogwood tends to do well in my tank, and i have an onion plants that seems ok too. i bought a big bit of anubias that had been well established on wood, and they ripped that apart fairly quicky, so i just have several chunks of floating anubias now. it doesnt look pretty, but it does give shelter and shade, and seems to survive alright.

how about trying some anubias, some java fern, and some other hardy and quick growing plants and seeing which your loaches ignore the most? different loaches seem to have favoutite plants for destroying.

i find the anubias is hard to kep the algae off, and the java fern fine, but other people may find things different, and it may depend on your lighting

My clowns don't bother about the Hygrophilia corymbosa, H polysperma or java fern, but they've destroyed my attempts to create a carpet of crypts

Now that I've posted this, I fully expect them to uproot everything.

I keep nothing but Cryptocoryne, and to date my clowns haven't bothered them. My clowns are on the smallish side though (one about 4-5 inches, the rest about 2 inches), so perhaps I'll learn more about them later. I feed mine a fair bit of vegetable matter, so perhaps they get their fill that way. I also have gravel substrate in the clown loach tank, which is hard for them to dig in - they essentially move one rock at a time (which si rather comical to watch, incidentally).

avee wrote:how can you grow live plants in clown loach tank? My loaches eat everything I try to grow. Do I need CO2 to get the plants growing or what should I do? Can you suggest some good plants with them? And how should I fight algae? A few plants that I've got all have black leaves instead of being bright green...
I feed the loaches cucumber and spirulina tablets several timesa week.

If they are already destroying everything them there is probably little hope. It seems to do a lot with the individual loaches, some do, some don’t. Apparently yours like plants. As suggested above you could try some of the more robust plants if you haven’t already. I think co2 and a high light / hi tech tank is one way, since the plants grow much stronger, quicker, and healthier, but this is a whole different world and you must understand what you’d be getting into. You need to have the right amount of light, co2, and fertilizers. If anything is amiss, then usually you either have a nasty algae outbreak or dead fish (too much co2, too little o2). Just giving you a heads up there.

Have you ever tried moss? You could really do a tank with lots of green with none of it actually planted. You can make moss backgrounds, moss ropes, moss on driftwood... etc. Just something else to consider.

bslindgren wrote:I keep nothing but CryptocoryneI feed mine a fair bit of vegetable matter, so perhaps they get their fill that way. I also have gravel substrate in the clown loach tank, which is hard for them to dig in - they essentially move one rock at a time (which si rather comical to watch, incidentally).

I should give mine more veg then.

Know what you mean about them clearing the gravel piece by piece. Mine used to toss it at the glass occasionally!