worried about yo-yo loach

[viranh]

I originally got my three yo-yo loaches for snail control. One of them was an incredible bully and bullied one of his companions to death. The other was moved to another tank and is doing well. The bully is the one I'm concerned about. He is in a 20g that is densely planted along the edges and open in the center. I have a penguin bio-wheel that moves 150g/hr. The temperature varies slightly between 74-76 depending on whether the lights are on or not. The lights are on a timer. Ammonia is at 0-.02ppm. pH is steady at 7.4. The water here is very hard, so it is strongly buffered (pH will not change). His tank mates are 2 small cory cats, 2 otocinclus, a honey sunset gourami and a baby blue paradise gourami. I'm worried about the yo-yo because he seems thinner than when I got him a few months ago and he comes out to scavenge for food, but seems uninterested in anything I'm feeding. I feed tetra bottom feeder tablets, algae tabs, several varieties of tropical flake, bloodworms, frozen brine shrimp, frozen daphnia, and have even tried shelled garden snails meant for crabs, but he doesn't want to eat any of it. The yo-yo is very shy, and seems afraid of me. He hides when I get close to the aquarium. I'm not sure what to do with him. I don't believe I have a water quality problem because I have plants blooming and my other fish are fine. I don't see any signs of illness or injury other than the unwillingness to eat.

[Batch]

Hey,
I had a similair introduction to loaches (yo-yos in fact), where I bought three for snail control. One was clearly the most dominate but never killed the others... Are yours about the same size? They did (or maybe just the one?) kill several tetras... okay long story somewhat shorter, I set up a tank for them, but I could only catch two, the third stayed by itself in the
tank for almost two weeks. I rarely got a glimpse of him (her?) during this time. I have no idea if he was eating or not. I finally got smart and figured out he was hiding in a resin rock. Once he joined the other two (plus the four more new ones I added), the overall aggression seemed to decrease, or at least got spread around...
Anyway with your single loach, I'm not surprised that all he does is hide. He needs more yo-yos.... that said, a 20g is pretty small for a large group.
How big was the previous tank? If it was too small, that might have contributed to his agressiveness.

Batch

[connor]

Welcome viranh

Unfortunately your loach problem is probably caused by multiple reasons (small tank, only one loach instead of 5+, water too cold, "wrong" dither fish). Please have a look at these wonderful articles which can really help you to keep those wonderful fish successfully:

http://www.loaches.com/care/the-loach-almanac
http://www.loaches.com/articles/an-intr ... ping-botia

-Connor