Yoyo loaches - advice needed!

[Ola123]

Hello everyone,
Im new to Aquarium hobby. Last year I got a new job and when I went the classroom the fish tank was there. Half filled with dirty water and a few fish alive…
I top up water and decided to keep it. Now, I have two tanks in my classroom and two at home
Few months ago I adapted two yoyo loaches; fully grown and with ADHD traits. I loved them from the first signt. I added them to my classroom fish tank. They were in 200l tank before and mine was only 112l. That was the reason i decided to set up a new tank at home. Its 290l (70 gallons) and Its southeast Asia biotope. So far I bought 12 vietnamese minnows, 7 danios and 6 harlequin rasboras and 4 Hill stream loaches. I decided to also get a company for my Tic and Tac and bought three new yoyo loaches. They are tiny at the moment. When I joined the forum I realised I made a bigmistake. Just read a few posts about yoyo’s killing each other. Can I add my big yoyos to the little ones? If not how long to I need to wait? What’s a chance they go along well at all?
Please advise me what to do. I don’t want to keep the big two in small tank (112l) but cant move them now!

[redshark1]

I keep Clown Loaches and it is normal practice to add even small ones to a shoal of much larger fish without aggression issues. However, I have noticed a few cases where two groups of different size may fail to associate together at least in the short term.

Clown Loaches are more gentle I think, but I'd expect it to be worth a try with Yoyos as they are not really aggressive. I've not heard of Yoyos killing each other. Could you link me to this info?

Are all your chosen stock temperature compatible?

Regarding keeping fish in the classroom, I have experience of this. An immaculate tank was donated to our school but nobody was specifically tasked with looking after it and it soon declined and became an embarrassment. What was it teaching the kids and visitors? I took it over, did all of the necessary work and made it something to be proud of. It was in a prominent place in the school reception where all visitors arrived. I looked after the fish in the school holidays, taking them home for the summer and going into school in the shorter holidays. There weren't many problems at first. The school temperature was 26C so cool water fish were not a good choice. The fish were killed when the school water tank was disinfected illegally and I didn't know. Platies (fish), sensitive to children banging on the glass, died of stress (dropsy/pine coning) so I took those home where they recovered quickly. Kids bang the glass compulsively and cannot be stopped easily. Otherwise it was a success until after 20 years somebody started poisoning the fish and I had to stop (but the survivors slowly recovered completely at my home).

[Ola123]

Thank you for your response.
I found and info about Yoyo loaches killing each other here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48417&p=230336&hili ... ch#p230336

I school tank is doing great at the moment. I have some problems, but not a major ones. I don’t know how to add photos, so I cant show you how it looks like.

The other thing is temperature compatibility. Some sources mentioned yoyos need 19-16’celcius. Some 24-28. I keep 22’celcius in my Asia tank. So far everything is ok

[redshark1]

Thanks for the link I've now seen the post about larger Yoyos killing smaller ones. I'm surprised at that.

Glad the temperature is working out, its something often overlooked.

Pictures make everything more interesting so I try to post them whenever I can.

However, it is more difficult on this site so I don't mind. The picture needs to be placed with a host. I use Imgur. The picture then has a link which can be copied from the host and posted in your post on this forum.

Place your picture with a host,
The one you like the most,
Copy the link from the host,
And paste it in your post.