Loaches Online Forum

So I am looking at getting zebra loaches. I had dwarf chain or Sid's loaches before and absolutely loved them. I loved how active they were always swimming in the glass and coming to the surface to get food. It always looked like they were dancing in the middle of the tank when they were hungry. Just fun fish.

So I was was wondering if I will get similar personality out of zebra loaches as I did from dwarf chain?

I own about 6 or 7 zebras. They're defintally the more active of my loaches. Not as active as Sid's I've watched in other tanks though. They don't use the upper water column unless there is chow up there, with one caveat...

Someone grave me some great advice when I was setting up my tank to add more structure higher in he tank - I've achieved this easily by stacking rocks and lots of driftwood. The zebra's will cruise "high" so long and there is something to keep their bellys glued too.

I also have golden zebras and they pretty much do the same thing.

I kept 6 striatas with 8 or 10 sids in a 4ft 75g. The zebras were a bit more shy of people. The 2 species divided themselves into 2 groups, 3 striatas & 4 or 5 sids in each group. 1 larger female of each species per group. I think the other 4 striatas were male, but there were some less chubby female sids. The fattest female sid was "leader" of each group. All loaches were out for feeding together & dancing after water changes. But then went back to their usual 2 groups. No fighting between groups or individuals, it just seemed an odd way of behavior.

I loved them & wished I could have gotten more than 6, but that's all I found at that time. They were a spur of the moment purchase, I bought all they had. I had never seen them in lfs before, they were labelled as yoyos

They were ~1.5 inches & only grew to 3+ inches. I have since seen them several times ~4+ inches. I had them for about 5 or 6 years or so, it seems like they should have grown faster. I often, but not always, treat new botiids with a wormer in quarantine. I don't remember if I did for those 2 species, it might have helped, if they had internal parasites that could have stunted them. Or maybe they're just really slow growers, I don't know.

I would definitely like to keep striatas again

I also kept histrionicas, they were not shy at all...except for the 1 that lived in the power head,