Loaches

[syhko]

HELLO!

I am back and better than ever with my tanks. I now have two 10-gallon tanks and plan to keep upgrading, I just had some questions to continue to educate myself.

How do I improve the life of my yoyo loach? He lives alone and eats all the bladder snails he can. I heard they are a little aggressive so I cannot keep it with others besides angelfish. I heard they grow quite big so I would have to upgrade the tank for him and a good tankmate. What tankmates can I have with him where they won't feel territorial? Are there any other foods I should feed him to vary his diet?

 

[Colin_T]

Most loaches need to be kept in groups of at least 6 (preferably 10) or more. Having one loach in a tank is going to stress that fish out.

Botia lohachata (yoyo or dwarf Pakistani loach) normally only grow to 4-5 inches long. However, there appears to be 2 species (or sub-species) in this fish. Some grow to 4-5 inches and others get to 8-10 inches.

The minimum size tank for this species is 3 foot long and bigger is better.

They need a variety of foods ranging from bottom feeding/ sinking pellets, to frozen foods like bloodworm, brineshrimp, daphnia, mysis shrimp, prawn, fish. And live foods like brineshrimp, daphnia and black worms can be added too.

If you bought a loach to control a snail problem, that was the wrong thing to do. Buying a fish to control an issue is putting a band aid on a problem. You need to find the underlying cause of the issue, and fix that. A diet consisting solely of snails is not good and the chances of the fish catching intestinal worms from the snails can be quite high depending on where the snails came from.

A 10 gallon tank is a bit small for most fish especially if you have a 3 inch? loach in there. It really needs companions and a bigger tank. Then it won't be as aggressive and you could add barbs, rainbowfish, rasboras, or other mid to surface dwelling fish.