quick question for a newbie

[Dave_2133]

Hi, i was just wondering on how some of thos clowns on the site have got so big as i've had mine for quite a few months with hardly any signs of growth.

[Emma Turner]

Hi Dave, and welcome to Loaches Online!

Which Clowns were you referring to in particular? A lot of my big Clowns are well over a decade old and have been kept in large aquariums from the start (ideally you want to keep them in a tank at least 4ft long to start with). If you give yours a spacious aquarium with excellent water conditions and current, and offer them a good varied diet (dry foods, frozen foods, green foods/veg etc), yours should grow well.

Emma

[Mark in Vancouver]

The key is the age of the fish. Some loaches can be expected to live for 30 or 40 years if they are accommodated in a clean, large tank. Clowns seem to grow steadily until they're about three inches long, and then it all slows down. Do it right for the next ten years, and see how big your loaches will be!

[Dave_2133]

Hi, thanks for the replies. My clowns are in a 4ft tank now with a good size of swimmng but they are sharing the tank with an 8" pleco, some medium size tinfoil barbs(biggest one 4"), and some catfish(biggest one about 4" again)

[Dave_2133]

the clown that is 11" theres a link on the main page. that is the sort of clown i want, it would look perfect swimming around any tank

[Emma Turner]

the clown that is 11" theres a link on the main page. that is the sort of clown i want, it would look perfect swimming around any tank

Any extra large tank I hasten to add! My shoal of 40 Clowns are in a 1000 litre aquarium and will need upgrading to a larger home at some point. Here's some photos of our specimens - they range in size from 3.5" up to 11.5":













Emma

[Dave_2133]

Now they are beautiful fish. I admire you for raising fish to that standard. How long did they take to grow and what kind of food do you feed the clowns on.

I have three at the mo in a 4ft (55g) tank and the biggest is about 4 1/2".

[Emma Turner]

Thank you, Dave!
I've had some of them for around 13 - 14 years now, and the biggest one that I've raised from a small size (approx 1.5") is now around 9". Some of the others I've had for that length of time range from around 5" up to 8.5". The two 'monsters' that can be seen in the overhead photo with the ruler measure around 10.5" and 11.5" total length. These had been given to an aquatics store for re-homing last year, and luckily we had a tip-off, and went and rescued them! Unfortunately, the previous owner left no information with the store (age of fish, size of tank they had been kept in etc) so we can only guess. I would imagine that they are over 15 years old though. There are also many other (smaller sized) Clowns I've acquired along the way, for instance when re-homing fish that people have bought into our store, and picking out ones with strange markings from Clown shipments.
With regards to food, their favourites are the sinking JMC catfish pellets, and chopped prawns. The prawns I buy fresh at Sainsbury's and chop them into smaller pieces (although the bigger Clowns can take them whole) and then freeze the chopped up prawns for later use. They also eat other frozen foods such as white mosquito larvae, brineshrimp, mysis, krill, and other dried foods such as Tetra prima, algae wafers, Tetra treats etc, and they also enjoy eating slices of cucumber/melon that I weigh down with pieces of plant-weight. We do put Tetra crisp flakes in for the barbs, but the loaches seem to pretty much ignore this. They get fed once a day (usually around 11:30pm at night) and we alternate between dried and frozen foods from one day to the next.
Good luck with your Clowns. Mine started off in a 4ft tank, then got moved to a 5ft, and they are now in a 7ft (extra wide and extra deep).

Emma

[Dave_2133]

Thanks for the info and tips Emma. I take any info into account as there's always someone whos knows more about certain topics than you and I, as i'm a novice compared to to experts like you who have years of experience under your belt.
What i think now is to try and free as much space in my tank for them to swim around but still leave pleny of hiding places. At the moment i'm feeding my fish on high protein catfish pellets, frozen bloodworm and cucumber, but i've never even knew you can feed them on prawns or melon. I thought krill would be to salty as they come from the sea.
Thanks once again for you help and i'll put them the test and one day my clowns will hopefully (fingers crossed) be as stunning and as big as your beauties.