Loaches Online Forum

We did a MAJOR tank rearrangement in the 120 today, to accommodate a big piece of driftwood. We have also been gradually adding rainwater with water changes. After the redecorating, all of the fish are in shoals of their own kind, and the sids have been swimming up and down the front of the tank, and we suddenly noticed two of them have really bulging bellies -- beyond fat or well-fed. So now we are hoping maybe this means they are females getting in the mood???? If they are, we'll try to move them and as many other sids (hopefully some attractive males) to their own private tank and try to set the mood????

Any thoughts?

Mad Duff?

it is the diamond tetras who swallow peas whole, not the sids....

cool let us know how it goes !?

i'm sure they aren't in roe, the bulging is more foreward than an eggladen female.

mick

mickthefish wrote:i'm sure they aren't in roe, the bulging is more foreward than an eggladen female.

mick

That is sad.

What is it then? They look far too healthy and frisky for it to be worms (and they went through full courses of levimasole and praziquantal ) and they are eating well.

I was so hoping we would have babies!!!!

Maybe eating too well LOL. My chubby female sids have darkened slightly greenish look, a larger all over fat bottom side not a swallowed marble shape. I'll try to get a pic after I clean their glass.

I agree with Mick. They are definitely not egg laden. I'd say they are just full bellied.

It's funny though, the Sids are in the least-likely-to-be-overfed category. It's hard for small or floating food to get anywhere near them through the danios, rasboras, and diamond tetras. Then sinking pellets end up in a ferocious scrum of much larger botias on the bottom. Any food seems to disappear with a "poof!" Once a week or so I make sure to feed some daphnea, since the sids mange to get some share of that.

A couple of months ago we even gave a handful of sids their own tank so we could try to fatten them up a bit -- they looked so skinny. And we didn't really succeed very well.

Unless they suddenly started grazing on hair algae or something, I don't see how they could get overfed at all.

My Sids sometimes get overfed. I have three of them, named Sid, Nancy, and Johnny. Nancy is smaller than Sid and Johnny, and when I first got them she was pretty thin. Depending on what I feed, they sometimes over-gorge themselves. Mostly I think it's because the Sids are so mobile compared to some of the other fish, feeding at all levels of the tank. Sometimes my Sids (especially Nancy) would have that bloated look after eating, but now she has grown and is harder to tell from the other two.

Their stomachs would be rounded, but not quite as round as in some of your pictures. The third picture in your top post looks as if he is about to explode, to the extent that the back even looks curved. I would watch to see if it goes up and down, or if it stays round. I noticed some of them definitely look rounder than others. It wouldn't hurt to go without feeding for a couple of days to see if that makes a difference.

Unfortunately, my Sids have never spawned, so I cannot say how a bloated tummy looks different from an egg-laden one.

Hopefully they are just getting a little overzealous at feeding time; they can be little piggies.

soul-hugger

soul-hugger wrote: I have three of them, named Sid, Nancy, and Johnny.

soul-hugger

LOL

I'd think Johnny would be fat and Sid and Nancy dead.... (sorry -- but you gotta be careful who you name your fish after!)

ROFL!!!

They were named when I got them, but I still found it kinda neat. Hopefully they won't take after their namesakes....

soul-hugger

Dare I admit our first three loaches were Maggie and Terri and Suzzy (wonder who will get that one)

And Suzzy jumped so Suzzy Loach is dead

As far as how-far-back the lump is, from the side the sids look rather like the gravid sid in the photo on this page:

http://www.carespreservation.com/?searc ... plate.html

In other words, like it could rock like a rocking horse right from the middle.

Some pictures of my gravid female:

Holy cow!

Did you get babies? She looks like she is going to explode!