New, Intro and my love affair with Botia Kubotai

[Melgrj7]

Hello, my name is Melissa. I have been reading here on and off for the past few years. I finally decided to join up. I live in the USA in Rochester, NY. I currently have a 60 gallon tank and the loach inhabitants are 6 or 7 botia kubotai (its hard to count them as the tank is very heavily planted). Up until the end of June I had worked in a petstore that was mostly a fish store. I managed the fish room for a few years, and worked there for a total of, i think, 6 or 7 years. The store has over 300 fish tanks on the retail floor and about twice that in the back room.

I decided to go back to school (starting soon, in January) so I needed to find a part time job with more flexible scheduling. I had a 75 gallon display tank I set up in the store around 5 years ago with clown loaches, who I miss a lot. The original ones (5 of them) grew from 1" to about 5-6" during that time. The 2nd wave of them (another 5) have been in the tank for 2 years and went from 1" to 3". There are 10 in there, along with 9 rainbow fish. I go back to visit them often.

A few (4 maybe?) years ago we got in a new loach from Myanmar that I fell in love with. It was being sold as a "clouded loach". I purchased 3 only to have them die within days, as did the entire shipment at the store. This hurt as they were $25 a piece at the time. We occasionally got them in and then about two years ago the price dropped dramatically, we were getting them in regularly and I was now the fish room manager. Being the fish room manager gave me more leeway to do what I wanted and I had started deworming all loach shipments, starting 3 days after arrival. I at first used levimisole and then switched to Prazi Pro when we started carrying it. The botia kubotai started surviving. Overall our loaches just started doing better. I purchased 3 more and put them into a 29 gallon tank. Later I purchased 2 more, brining my total up to 5. They shared the tank with 2 angelfish and 3 beckford's pencilfish (which recently died at the age of about 5 years old).

My angels and botias were getting large so I purchased them a 60 US gallon tank. I set it up, moved my filters, plants and gravel over and then the fish. Unfortunately my botias came down with ICH and I lost all but 1 of them. Once the last guy stabilized I decided I needed to get him buddies again. He went from being active and out to hiding all the time. We had gotten a shipment of young ones (about a half an inch long) and I bought 9 of them. I lost a few in quarantine, and now have a total of 6 or 7 botia kubotai. As I said before it is hard to count them because the tank is very heavily planted. This group is now at adult hood, they are all around 2-3 inches and in, or almost in, total adult coloration. These guys are much, much more secretive than my last group. I find it odd since all but 1 of these were purchased as babies, so I would think they would acclimate even better to a captive situation. They just started coming out more and more and I have had them for nearly a year. My original guy is about 4 inches long and the leader of the group. Lately he has been getting challenged by a youngster. Fights between the 2 are happening every few days and lasting up to 15 minutes long. The big always wins and sends the youngster into hiding for a few hours afterwards. Once in awhile fights break out amongst some of the younger ones, but not to frequently.

They feast heavily on a wide variety of things. I feed them frozen blood worms, mysis shrimp, brine shrimp, chopped up krill, mosquito larvae, live grindal worms and brine shrimp. They also get a variety of pellet foods (3 different brands of shrimp pellets and algae wafers along with the tropical fish food of which I have 7 different brands). All the food is replaced every 6 months if it has not been used up. Oddly the botias favorite foods are OSI shrimp pellets and hikari algae wafers. Twice a week I soak the frozen foods in vitamins for 20 minutes prior to feeding.

They share the tank with many fish (it is overstocked) including 2 large angelfish, 4 A. thomasi, 7 harlequin rasboras, 1 betta splendens, 9 otocinclus arnoldi, 1 peckolita sp., 6 Characodon lateralis "Los Berros" + fry and 2 pearl gouramis who are soon to go as they have gotten uncharacteristically aggressive. There are also lots of Malaysian trumpet snails. The botias do not eat these as the shell is very hard. They did eat all of the ramshorn snails. Twice a week I do a 50% water change. I feed the tank once or twice a day and fast them one day a week. Filtration is a fluval 405, which is used strictly for mechanical filtration. It is cleaned once a month. The tank is very heavily planted, no gravel shows, it is all covered with plants. Light is a 110 watt power compact and a regular fluorescent double bright (holds 2 bulbs). I also inject DIY (yeast) CO2. Temp is around 75*f. The slightly lower temperature keeps the angelfish from breeding. If I raise it they try to kill everyone.

Once I have a house I want to try keeping my botia kubotai outdoors in a pond for the summer. I think they will do very well outside while it is warm enough. I would love to have them breed but from what I understand it is very rare to have laoches breed in captivity. Are hillies the only loaches that have been bred in captivity?

Does anyone else here keep botia kubotai? How do you keep them?

Along with my 60 US gallon fish tank (the one described above) I have a 56 US gallon tank housing 2 goldfish, which gets almost daily water changes. I also have a 2 US gallon tank with a pair of A. bitaeniatum "ijebu ode". I also have fry and eggs almost constantly from the killies (the A. bitaeniatum). I also have 2 cats, a box turtle, a hermanns tortoise and am getting a puppy very soon:)

All the tanks have live plants.

Sorry that was so long!

[shari2]

Welcome to LOL Melgrj7.
Bout time, eh?

Sounds like an interesting tank(s) you've got there. If you can, post up some pics.

[Melgrj7]

Yeah, I've been lurking for a very long time haha. My tank has an odd mix. Being in a one bedroom apartment is very limiting:( I have very little will power when it comes to fish and now that I do not have 300+ tanks to play with its even harder! I will post some pictures soon. Warning, I only have a camera phone so they will crappy. Will do it maybe tomorrow if I have time, will be looking for a puppy at shelters/pound/humane society:)

Welcome to LOL Melgrj7.
Bout time, eh?

Sounds like an interesting tank(s) you've got there. If you can, post up some pics.

[Martin Thoene]

Welcome to LOL Melgrj7, or should I say welcome to LOL as a registered member. You've probably worked out long ago this is the place to be for loach stuff and of course there's the FW Forum for your other fish too.

Your post was long but interesting. It's nice to get an idea of who someone is when they arrive here. It is plainly obvious that you are a fish "nut" like the rest of us and care deeply about your fishes' welfare. It sounds like if you were a fish living at your place would be great!

I've had 3 Botia kubotai for around 3-4 years now. Presently they live in a 6 foot 125 (in a 1 bedroom apartment ) with 10 Clowns, 3 B. histrionica, a lone B. dario that I adopted and some barbs and Cories.

I've always found them to be somewhat secretive and very jumpy. I don't know if having more might cure that. Trouble is, almost every shipment I see in local shops have Chronic Wasting Syndrome and they're too expensive to take on as a project to hopefully return them to full health. I have seen good looking specimens but shipments of these seem rare.

Martin.

[Emma Turner]

Hi Melissa - welcome to Loaches Online.

Thank you for such an interesting and detailed first post. What sort of temperatures do you experience in the winter? I would be concerned for the B. kubotai being kept outdoors if the temp drops out of their preferred range, or if there is a large fluctuation from day to day. Bringing them in for the winter every year may be an unnecessary stress for them.

With regards to loach breeding, these reports are few and far between. Quite a number of hillstream loach species have been bred: Pseudogastromyzon cheni, Sewellia lineolata, Sewellia sp. 'spotted' and I think L. disparis disparis, plus a few other species such as Misgurnus anguillicaudatus, Acanthocobitis zonalternans, Acanthocobitis botia, Pangio oblonga, Schistura nicholsi and Schistura cf. balteata. The Botiines remain a bit of a mystery though, likely triggered by seasonal changes in their native habitats.

Emma

[Martin Thoene]

Yeah, Jim and I both bred L. disparis.

Martin.

[Emma Turner]

Thought so! Mesonoemacheilus triangularis should be added to that list too.

[mikev]

Hi Melissa,

Nice to see another Kub Addict around..

Does anyone else here keep botia kubotai? How do you keep them?

The current Kub population here is 15. It might decrease in the next few days: the newest ones came with Ich...possibly have CWS as well. The first ones are here for more than two years, grew from <1" babies which at that time were the only ones available around. The main group of 9 owns a 65g (no other loaches there), a couple live in a large tank with clowns until the time I have energy to extract them from it. This thread has some details on my pack.

It would be very nice to see pictures of yours.

[newshound]

wow what a long post (and that's great) I wish those with sick fish would post a little more than three lines.
anyhows...I too love kubs and have had difficulties with them.
I bought three large ones about three years ago at the Ark petshop in Sudbury (RIP) at about $25 each. Alot for me as I had just moved and was re establishing my business. Man I wish I had bought the 7 of them!
Two were eaten by my cat who discovered that a bag with fish in it floating on top of a tank can be grabbed and the contents eaten
man that cat makes me mad sometimes!
I bought some young Kubs about a year ago at Martin's fave fish store in Toronto during a visit and they were in ruff shape. An extended treatment and they are doing great now mixing it up with a large clown, darios, horseface, histies, zebras and a lone sid.
Truely my fave fish.
I had up to five planted tanks but have scaled back because they are so much work!!!!!!

[newshound]

I find that kubs are very up front during there younger years.
As they mature they hide except during feedings like clowns, darios etc...

[Melgrj7]

Hi Melissa - welcome to Loaches Online.

Thank you for such an interesting and detailed first post. What sort of temperatures do you experience in the winter? I would be concerned for the B. kubotai being kept outdoors if the temp drops out of their preferred range, or if there is a large fluctuation from day to day. Bringing them in for the winter every year may be an unnecessary stress for them.

Emma

It would get to cold in the winter here. We often have days below 30*f. And usually at a least a few near 0*f. I have a friend who tries new fish outdoors in his pond for the summer every year. By the end of summer the fish always look amazing. I might try it one summer and see how they do. It will be awhile before I have a house anyway though. They could be outside for about 3 months. The other thing I have been thinking was to have a heated green house and putting a pond in there and trying them in that. Again, that would be several years away. I like to dream:) When I do get a house I am having a fish room again. At my parents house I had 30+ tanks in their basement as a teenager, plus worked at the store. Then when I managed the fish room I had over 300 tanks at my disposal. Being limited to 3 is very hard:(

[Martin Thoene]

This sounds like a very bad case of frustrated MTS you have there......with future dreams of how to remedy it!

A pond in a greenhouse sounds cool. My uncle was a horticulturist by profession and he used to keep goldfish in the under-staging water-storage tanks in the greenhouses at work. The fish always looked absolutely fabulous. I'm sure it's all the sunshine and the algae and microscopic life-forms that develop in those conditions.

Martin.

[Melgrj7]

I like to take good care of my animals. It makes me happy:) I am going thin my tank though i think. The pearl gourmis are going to go and I think my thomasi might have to go too, this group is way more aggressive than ones I have had in the past. I caught one chasing one of my loaches around the tank for a full 2 minutes, before I intervened, chasing the thomasi with a net away from the botia.

My first group of kubotai were very outgoing. They were always out and about and would come up to the glass when they saw me. My second group is starting to be more outgoing. When they were babies I never saw them, infact for awhile I thought I had lost all of them. Then one day I saw some adult botias in there, I was very excited:)

I have had really good luck with deworming botias that came into the store really skinny. I would put them into a bare bottomed tank with some pvc tubes to hide in, a box filter with floss, and deworm them with prazi pro. I usually did 3 treatments. They got daily water changes (automatic water changing system, 20% daily). I also fed them foods soaked in vitamins. If they were extremely skinny I would actually put the vitamins right into the tank and "soak" the fish in them for about a half an hour before the water change started. They got fed very small amounts 8, 9, 10 times a day, basically when ever I walked by I tossed some food in. Losses went way down, although our profits were probably all but lost after all this. I would rather save the fish than make profits or let them die so as not to sink more money into them . . . which is what the live stock buyer wanted me to do. He said if we let them die we could get credit for them, but I can't just watch animals die like that.

Your post was long but interesting. It's nice to get an idea of who someone is when they arrive here. It is plainly obvious that you are a fish "nut" like the rest of us and care deeply about your fishes' welfare. It sounds like if you were a fish living at your place would be great!

I've had 3 Botia kubotai for around 3-4 years now. Presently they live in a 6 foot 125 (in a 1 bedroom apartment ) with 10 Clowns, 3 B. histrionica, a lone B. dario that I adopted and some barbs and Cories.

I've always found them to be somewhat secretive and very jumpy. I don't know if having more might cure that. Trouble is, almost every shipment I see in local shops have Chronic Wasting Syndrome and they're too expensive to take on as a project to hopefully return them to full health. I have seen good looking specimens but shipments of these seem rare.

Martin.

[Melgrj7]

Here is (hopefully) my 60 gallon when I first set it up. It is much more heavily planted now. This is the tank the kubotai live in.


The 2 gallon Killi tank (recently redesigned):



Some of the clown loaches from the store, I am hoping they will still be there in a few years so I can take them home. The picture mostly has the smaller guys in it, but big ones ran when I held up my phone:



I have had no luck getting pictures of my kubotai. They don't sit still long enough. I will keep trying though.

[Martin Thoene]

Yes, aren't kubotai little devils to photograph?

Your tanks look lovely. I so much prefer naturalistic looking aquariums.

Martin.