I bought clown loach Number 7

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Loachloach
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Sun Apr 26, 2015 4:25 pm

Baby clown loach just grabbed his pellet straight out of my fingers for the first time. I think it won't be long before he learns to be hand fed every day :D

Maarten B
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Maarten B » Mon Apr 27, 2015 9:43 am

Sorry, cory. :(
did you tell the clown he now his to fullfill the corys lifespan aswell as his own?
is the qtank back to normal now?
and how are the platies doing?
handfeeding already? I might have a trie at that. Spirulina good for trying?

Loachloach
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Mon Apr 27, 2015 11:50 am

Sorry, cory. :(
did you tell the clown he now his to fullfill the corys lifespan aswell as his own?
Sad story, isn't it.... : :cry: I sure hope the clown loach makes up in life span for what was a healthy beautiful cory.

Yes, the tank is back to normal. The platies and the clown loach show no symptoms of anything and looking good from what I can tell. I've been doing daily water changes and the temp is now at around 27C and will stay there for a while. The TDS has a tad bit more to go. It's now down to around 450ppm, has to go down to 300ppm but I am only changing 20% at a time.

The clown loach learnt to first come near the front glass when I approach as I dropped tiny amounts of food each time, and then if I put my fingers in he'd come near my fingers, like 3-4cm away hovering on one place just waiting for the food, and when the pellets start falling he'd grab the first he can catch. But I figured this trick with a slightly larger pellet of 2mm instead of the smaller 0.5mm as he doesn't seem to be able to catch the smaller ones as easily. I use NLS Thera A+ on him right now due to the high garlic content and those are the ones that do the trick but works with blood worms too. He does like the spirulina mini pellets too but I only have them in large sticks and tiny pellets and you need something of the size they can easily see and grab straight away.

Last night I was just holding a couple of NLS pellets and was waiting for him to come closer, instead he shot at my finger and grabbed one that was sticking out. I'll keep repeating this until he does it very often. This will make it very easy in the larger tank to target feed him if he maintains this behaviour.

And it also totally eliminated the aggression during feeding as he gets to the food first and just sinks down at the bottom munching the "trophy" he caught himself quietly instead of chasing the platies :lol:

Loachloach
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Mon Apr 27, 2015 12:24 pm

I tried getting a video for you of the clown fetching.....I put my camera on a little box in front of the tank so I can have my hands free and then fed the clown but I hadn't set it up correctly and my fingers are invisible but watch the falling pellet at around the 7th second into the video. That's basically when I stuck my fingers in the water holding 4-5 nls pellets.
You'll see the clown shooting up to my fingers near the surface immediately from whatever he was doing... My fingers are actually in the water though invisible on this video... I actually dropped the first pellet by accident. I meant to make him wait..... :x :lol: and he caught it.....and swam away to the left eating it.
Then I dropped the rest of the pellets for the platies.

But that's basically what he does now, comes up to my fingers and manages to catch the first or the 2nd pellet. Yesterday when I was slow dropping them, he grabbed it out of my fingers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56HbD1U ... e=youtu.be

I had just done a water change prior to this and me splashing and fiddling around doesn't bother him one bit. I noticed when I was raising an otto and did daily water changes, he stopped swimming away from me too and got quite used of human contact. He just kept munching away.
I wish my other clown loaches were ever that friendly. The first year I couldn't walk into the room without them hiding.
Last edited by Loachloach on Mon Apr 27, 2015 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Loachloach
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Mon Apr 27, 2015 1:15 pm

Compare the above video to my previous attempts at feeding him when I dropped a bunch of tiny pellets instead of target feeding him. He couldn't see the pellets falling and that made him go mad with the platies. It's their fault, go chase them clown :lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh3zPrsk09E

Maarten B
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Maarten B » Mon Apr 27, 2015 6:16 pm

Loachloach wrote: It's their fault, go chase them clown :lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh3zPrsk09E
:lol: :lol:
pour platies will never eat in peace. the clown must feel like a big strong man in that tank.
in hadn't seen the platies size yet. how sweet!!! :D

Loachloach
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Tue Apr 28, 2015 3:37 am

Loachloach wrote:pour platies will never eat in peace. the clown must feel like a big strong man in that tank.
He surely does. He's the boss now :lol:
As soon as I am 100% certain there's no diseases introduced, I'll be thinning out the platies moving the biggest although I'll leave him a few platies for company while he's in there. They seem to work well for him as dithers which was why I left them in the tank in the first place.

Loachloach
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Wed May 06, 2015 2:06 pm

Well, I think I am out of the clouds for now as far as ich and flashing goes. I haven't seen any signs of this occurring for a good while.

The little clown is a very friendly loach, at least for now. He'll probably go "hate war" on me one day when he joins the rest :roll:
At the moment, he comes up to the glass every time I approach the tank, doing a vertical loach dance, begging for food. And he's out and about all day long and like a good baby, goes to bed at around 11.30pm. The lights turn off at 12 so he's kind of used of it now I think.

And I think he's grown or at least filled out a bit:

When I got him 3.5 weeks ago:
Image

And today's picture
Image

Loachloach
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Mon May 18, 2015 4:45 am

And a handfeeding video of my clown loach. He's got so tame now he comes sniffing my hand while I siphon the substrate.
I am sure he'll pick up bad habits when he joins his brothers.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjAFVY-cpgQ

Nick Hancock
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Nick Hancock » Mon May 18, 2015 10:19 pm

That's great. I'm going to have to try it with mine once they wipe out all the little ramshorns. Anything to make them not scamper and disappear when I come into the room.

He/she certainly plumped up since the earlier picture and his color seems deeper also. What kind of pellet are you feeding?

Loachloach
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Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Tue May 19, 2015 6:25 am

The one in the video is a spirulina stick from http://www.ta-aquaculture.com/
I buy them for my ottos because it's the only pellet they'll eat.

But the staple is new life spectrum cichlid pellets which the clown loach eats a few times a day plus for now, every other day, frozen food.

Maarten B
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Location: Nederland

Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Maarten B » Sat Jul 25, 2015 5:13 am

And how is he doing now? I see he has gained colour.

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

Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Sat Jul 25, 2015 6:46 am

Thanks for asking Maarten. He's doing great from what I can tell, no issues with him at all and he's been with the bigger boys for quite a while. I'd say he had a good colour long ago but my light and the angle of the videos wash him out. I've never seen him greyed out since I bought him. I think all baby clown loaches don't really grey out.
But unfortunately I am dealing with another problem as their tank leaked all over from the bottom seal and for the last week everyone has been jammed in my 5f tank. I am in the process of resealing their tank. They took well to the move though and are enjoying unlimited amount of snails and shrimp as this tank is heavily planted and has many tiny critters.

P.S.
How is your bunch doing?

Maarten B
Posts: 60
Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2015 7:07 am
Location: Nederland

Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Maarten B » Sat Jul 25, 2015 7:15 pm

A leak? That must be a nightmare. The fish are lucky you have a suitable backup. No collateral damage?
On the other hand, a nicd chance to redecorate. Most aquarists always want to improve existing tanks. Do you have new ideas?

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

Re: I bought clown loach Number 7

Post by Loachloach » Sun Jul 26, 2015 6:11 am

Yes, it's a really horrible feeling. I nearly cried but I had no time to cry because water was gushing from the bottom and it would have drained the entire tank if I wasn't there. The floor got soaked but I saved the fish.

Plan is to get the tank really well planted, with a soil substrate, which I wanted to do for many years. I think my loaches, apart from the stress they went through, are enjoying the tank they are in now. There are lots of hiding places because of the plants. Baby loach is out all the time again and he had stopped doing that when I moved him to the other tank with the loaches because it was bare enough, plus there were no dither fish. Now he's back swimming with "his" platies :lol:
The interesting part is that my common pleco is like a snake in there and not damaging anything despite his size. Although he's not a happy camper. I tore his fins and tail while trying to catch him. He's a monster and stronger than I thought.

I'll see if I manage to properly reseal the entire tank. It's going to be my first time doing that. Now it's all scraped from the old silicone and cleaned up well. Next step is to apply the new silicone but that needs doing really fast as there's a possibility it will start curing before I can even smooth it out. So I prey I do it right from the first time and I don't have to scrape and clean silicone again as this is the tough part.
I won't rush moving the fish back up for a few weeks at least to make sure it's all done right. I hope they do ok till then in the overstocked tank.

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