My lovely matched set of Hora's loaches turned into leconti!

[Christmasfish]

I am bummed..when I moved the tank downstairs and added sand to it
I had strange loaches!
I started with two modesta...a silver dove gray and a neutral grey with 3 light stripes showing. BOTH had a stripe down the back and at the caudal with white trim. Now the larger is fully striped. Still lovely...but not what I bought and WAY aggressive (it tried to bite ME when I moved the ornaments). The other has break in the back stripe and three dark bars on the flank. It is likely the same too!

About Botia Lecnotei ..... How aggressive are they generally? They already sleep in two different spots and most the other fish stay at the opposite end of the tank.
Will I need to trade them in soon? My striatus is a congenial fellow who sleeps with the gourami and avoids the grouch. The little one is still a great algae eater....it picks the decorations and glass pretty clean (not as good as the otos..but as good as snails), but it doesn't touch mulm.

[Allivymar]

Never had any experience with the Botia Lecnoteis nor actually know anyone who has em; did the folks at loaches.com have any info? I'd appreciate if you'd share the responses here so we can share that info with other folks

[Christmasfish]

Auugh! TYPO ! Lecontei...LECONTEI..





http://www.loaches.com/species_pages..._lecontei.html

the first one is EXACTLY like the larger botia..but they started like THIS:
http://www.loaches.com/species_pages/botia_morleti.html


No info yet except someone got a few with a bunch of skunks.
So they obviously share the same enviroment.
His is at 3 inches now and seems to hang with the skunks (I must have a grumpy one). His is shy..mine is shy too..mean and shy at the same time...pardoxal

[patryuji]

I had a hymenophysa the same way. These various botias can hide their true coloration quite well when in a stressful location. Stripes totally disappear, coloration changes to match that of the skunks...now that I viewed those links I am thinking my hymenophysa could have been a lecontei (never seen the striped pics before as I thought it was a colored fin loach).

The tiger loach I had was aggressive with all fish. Even while only 1.5" long it would harass my angelfish (2.5" body at the time so roughly 6" total size) if the angel would try to get any "sinking pellets" near its territory. Once these guys are comfortable their true colors come out strongly. The meaner the loach the shyer the loach from what I have seen so far. The only time my tiger wasn't shy was when it was trying to beat up the other loaches. Yet even the tiger would not try to attack me....(it was around 2.5" when it met its untimely demise).

Are these the ones you originally thought were skunk loaches? I have never seen any of my loaches eat anything green. All loaches I have had, even when moved from one tank to the next, will check every single plant, hiding place, etc, to find snails. At first I thought my yo-yo loach was thinking about eating some plants but I watched the way it dug through the java moss and deftly climbed through my hornwort whereupon I realized it was looking for snails and uninterested in my plants for any other reason.

If everything stays on the opposite side of the tank it will probably get worse in time (thus why I moved my sun loach into my 10Gallon tank and found a new QT and the sun loach is a pansy compared to the tiger loach). The tiger I had (which may have been lecontei) was very aggressive and near the end actually had the skunks hiding behind my filter and heater (resting on the suction cups of the heater). I say it is bad news unless you have a very aggressive tank for it to go into if it is the same fish I had(I thought I would keep mine around to keep the skunks busy since I wanted 3 skunks total to keep them occupied with fighting amongst themselves but nobody could handle it though it did mostly just attack other loaches).

[Christmasfish]

I think I have a pair of them. I was trying for two skunks which I know prefer company of other similar loaches. And these were the most silvery ones in the tank with the blackest black, while the others had a pinkish hue. Both are pretty good at eating everything but mulm.. the little one does it where I can see him every other night or morning. They usually are scraping the glass and decorations off. But the croaking gourami are just not aggressive enough to handle them..specially if these guys get any larger. I suppose the could go with my dwarf wild, but if they bother him, he may turn the tables and remove everything that he can nip off safely should they become his targets. I am thinking of trading them for two more striata or a couple cories. They are very beautiful in this striped form..and the adult color is not bad...but the mean one has to go..may as well give up his buddy.