Clown Loaches vs Plants vs Aquascapers

[ReproachfulLoach]

Hi all! This month I officially surrendered in my fight with black beard algae and dying plants, and decided to ask for professional help to make something out of my 350L tank. The core of my tank (and the reason why I even got into this messy business) are five clown loaches. The biggest and the oldest pair are 4 years old, they are already 16 cm each and I am immensely proud of adopting them in a tiny tank, treating them from worms (with the help of this forum), and raising them this big, fat, and good-looking.

So I call a few aquascaping companies and a technician comes to me to do tests and plan major reconstruction. He looks at the tank, compliments my setup, makes a couple of enthusiastic suggestions and says how much he would like to introduce some pretty cover plants, provided I am willing to get rid of the clown loaches. Poor guy got visibly sad when he heard that the entire setup needs to be done for the loaches. To live their comfortable messy lives in there.

He is actually not the first: a guy who was helping me install the filter said something similar.

If I think about it, many clown-loach youtubers have them in tanks with no soil or plants, just glass and driftwood. Which makes me wonder if someone could share their setup with clown loaches? Or just share your experience - do you have them with pants? Can you recommend anything sturdy enough to survive a 16 cm piglet digging a pellet from its roots? Or basically any advice.

Loach tax attached.

 

[ruud]

These are from warm, blackwater streams in Sumatra. This is very easy to replicate and makes an interesting scape.

As a subtrate you use plain quartz sand mixed with dead leaf litter and botanicals. A few branches reaching the top of the tank, as if they were fallen in the water. But leave sufficient space for the loaches as they grow a lot bigger.

You keep plants mostly around the water surface and above it.

A spotlight directed towards the plants is all you need.

 

[A201]

I keep many varieties of Loaches, Modestas, YoYo's, Angelicus & Tigers. Lol, no Clowns.

My Modestas are very similar to Clown Loaches. Big & fat and currently a little bigger than your Clowns.

I'm not really a plant guy, but have successfully kept the easy varieties, Anubias, Java Fern & moss.

I also keep numerous Barbs that would greedily consume any and all plants.

A group of Rosy Barbs would probably take care of any Black Beard algae as well as a lot of the green algae.

My 120g tank is hardscaped with nearly 150 lbs. of rock and several big pieces of Spiderwood. No plants.

My suggestion is to add to your hardscape using tall interesting rocks & driftwood. Attach Rhizome plants to the hardscape.
The pplantsshould be fine.

Here's a pic of my tank.

 

[ReproachfulLoach]

These are from warm, blackwater streams in Sumatra. This is very easy to replicate and makes an interesting scape.

As a subtrate you use plain quartz sand mixed with dead leaf litter and botanicals. A few branches reaching the top of the tank, as if they were fallen in the water. But leave sufficient space for the loaches as they grow a lot bigger.

You keep plants mostly around the water surface and above it.

A spotlight directed towards the plants is all you need.

This looks amazing. I love all the roots, so many nooks for the loaches. And it looks like gouramis and barbs woud have fun in it too.

I keep many varieties of Loaches, Modestas, YoYo's, Angelicus & Tigers. Lol, no Clowns.

My Modestas are very similar to Clown Loaches. Big & fat and currently a little bigger than your Clowns.

I'm not really a plant guy, but have successfully kept the easy varieties, Anubias, Java Fern & moss.

I also keep numerous Barbs that would greedily consume any and all plants.

A group of Rosy Barbs would probably take care of any Black Beard algae as well as a lot of the green algae.

My 120g tank is hardscaped with nearly 150 lbs. of rock and several big pieces of Spiderwood. No plants.

My suggestion is to add to your hardscape using tall interesting rocks & driftwood. Attach Rhizome plants to the hardscape.
The pplantsshould be fine.

Here's a pic of my tank.

Great setup! Thanks for the advice: rizome pants sound like a good option. I am considering replacing my weird sand/substrate mix with just sand or small gravel like you have. If I do that, anubiases or something similar will create some space for gouramis.

Interesting, my moss barbs were never really into plants. They would chew on a zucchini or a piece of broccoli, but plants are mostly ignored.

 

[tinylostwine]

Most blackwater sa plants like sword plants will grow fine as well as various softwater crypts like wenditti. My clowns are around 7 inch (i have 13 in a 600); and they never touch plants. This of course is not identical to their environment as their native plants are different if that matters to you.

 

[ReproachfulLoach]

Most blackwater sa plants like sword plants will grow fine as well as various softwater crypts like wenditti. My clowns are around 7 inch (i have 13 in a 600); and they never touch plants. This of course is not identical to their environment as their native plants are different if that matters to you.

Thanks, will try those. They do not really eat the plants, but they tend do break or dig out tender plants when they are picking up pellets.
And also, 13 7-inch loaches. Wow.

 

[A201]

The Mascara & Filamentosa Barbs are the notorious plant eaters. The Rosys, Black Ruby & Tiger Barbs are plant friendly.

 

[tinylostwine]

I have amazon swords, ruffle sword, large anubia bartari among other plants with my clowns. Also not all are 7 inches just the largest 2.

Now you have to be a bit more careful adding the plants after the fact since the loaches can distrib them as they swim but they won't deliberately eat them or dig them up - or at least mine don't.

 

[Redshark1]

I've never tried plants with my clown loaches since I was advised not to when I started with them in 1995 and have seen that many people's clown loaches eat them. My clown loaches are my focus and I have another aquarium for my plants.

 

[coralbandit]

My clowns ate some plants and not others. I clearly remember them decimating a Madagascar lace plant bulb in 2 days. They will also appear to be eating the plants if they come with snails or snail eggs, It is a risk to try live plants with clowns IME.

 

[tinylostwine]

My clowns ate some plants and not others.
I clearly remember them decimating a Madagascar lace plant bulb in 2 days.
They will also appear to be eating the plants if they come with snails or snail eggs,
It is a risk to try live plants with clowns IME.

Well i wouldn't use the word risk as much as it might be unsuccessful. I mean there is no real harm in trying 'cept the cost of the plants. Here is a picture of my current aquarium for them that has been setup for 2 years (it is 600 gallons); nothing new has been added - the ruffles near the camera are suffering from lack of nutrients - there are a few jungle vals on the far end but the chocolate digging has disturbed most of them so it will take them a while to recover - what you see going to the top at the far end are a line of runners from the amazon sword and a very large a. barteri. There is a large but smaller barteri center right at the far end. Behind the barteri corner off by some driftwood is a huge hole down to the glass with substrate piled up to make it 5 or so inches deep created by the chocolates (it was all level before they decided to get creative). The flash pleco love that area and are slowly eating away the driftwood that form the sides of the hole so only time will tell what will happen.

Talking about snails - someone gave me 20 mystery snails - i put 15 in this aquarium and they lasted less than a day.

That black piece of slate on top of driftwood forms the largest cave for the clown loaches - there is a second cave obscured by the driftwood in front of it (it also has a large piece of slate) that a lot of the smaller loaches hide under with a couple of clowns. In terms of loaches the population include 13 clowns, 4 yoyo, 15 zebra.

One of the clowns drives me mad. He will come out of his cave when the lights go on - go to the middle of the aquarium and plop down on his side like he died. He does this EVERY SINGLE day just to drive me crazy.

 

[coralbandit]

Yea this was my 180 back in 2015. I added CO2 and most plants thrived. It ended up a jungle of whatever that is in there and anacharis. At some point they discovered they liked plants and started to munch on them. I loved when they would play dead. Sometimes 2 or 3 of them would stack up in the front of the tank. My largest still does it today but not every day like he used to.

 

[ReproachfulLoach]

I have amazon swords, ruffle sword, large anubia bartari among other plants with my clowns. Also not all are 7 inches just the largest 2.

Now you have to be a bit more careful adding the plants after the fact since the loaches can distrib them as they swim but they won't deliberately eat them or dig them up - or at least mine don't.

Yes, that's what I noticed as well: once the roots have grown enough, vallisneria or amazon swords can easily survive the digging. Younger plants, however, not so much: RIP a ton of expensive tissue cultures I tried to introduce during the first year.

I've never tried plants with my clown loaches since I was advised not to when I started with them in 1995 and have seen that many people's clown loaches eat them. My clown loaches are my focus and I have another aquarium for my plants.

Your tank looks very neat, I love the shapes of the wood. Combined with the designs above, I guess I will ask for something that would resemble the bottom of the river.

Just out of curiosity, how big are your loaches? They look huge compared to the rest of the fish.

Well i wouldn't use the word risk as much as it might be unsuccessful. I mean there is no real harm in trying 'cept the cost of the plants. Here is a picture of my current aquarium for them that has been setup for 2 years (it is 600 gallons); nothing new has been added - the ruffles near the camera are suffering from lack of nutrients - there are a few jungle vals on the far end but the chocolate digging has disturbed most of them so it will take them a while to recover - what you see going to the top at the far end are a line of runners from the amazon sword and a very large a. barteri. There is a large but smaller barteri center right at the far end. Behind the barteri corner off by some driftwood is a huge hole down to the glass with substrate piled up to make it 5 or so inches deep created by the chocolates (it was all level before they decided to get creative). The flash pleco love that area and are slowly eating away the driftwood that form the sides of the hole so only time will tell what will happen.

Talking about snails - someone gave me 20 mystery snails - i put 15 in this aquarium and they lasted less than a day.

That black piece of slate on top of driftwood forms the largest cave for the clown loaches - there is a second cave obscured by the driftwood in front of it (it also has a large piece of slate) that a lot of the smaller loaches hide under with a couple of clowns. In terms of loaches the population include 13 clowns, 4 yoyo, 15 zebra.

One of the clowns drives me mad. He will come out of his cave when the lights go on - go to the middle of the aquarium and plop down on his side like he died. He does this EVERY SINGLE day just to drive me crazy.
View attachment 928940

I tried adding snails once. I decided, if they are large enough, clowns won't be able to kill them, so I purchased 10 beautiful neretinas. Man, I was so wrong. That night clowns' clicking woke me up at 3 a.m. They were feasting on the last one by that time.

View attachment 928941
Yea this was my 180 back in 2015.
I added CO2 and most plants thrived.
It ended up a jungle of whatever that is in there and anacharis.
At some point they discovered they liked plants and started to munch on them.
I loved when they would play dead. Sometimes 2 or 3 of them would stack up in the front of the tank.
My largest still does it today but not every day like he used to.

I was considering CO2, but I was very tentative about it, because I did not want to make another failed investment. I guess I will add it now: the technitian recommended it, and I see it worked great in many tanks on this board.

My loaches rarely play dead these days, but sometimes they hang upside down in their houses, and they stare at me when I sleep on the couch next to the tank. Hilarious little guys.

 

[coralbandit]

If you are going to use CO2 I would invest in a controller not just counting bubbles.
The accuracy and safety from EOTD [ end of tank dump] is worth it.

 

[tinylostwine]

co2art controllers are decent bang for the buck but not sure how much tarrifs have impacted price. The cheaper one they sell is fine - i ran co2 for a while but decided it wasn't worth the headache and stopped and never again. These days i do mostly blackwater tanks and plants grow too fast without co2 - i have to move in about 20 months and then my clowns will end up in a tank that near blackwater conditions.

Clowns are kind of funny - in the wild they experience both extreme soft water and harder water - not sure how much of it is related to breeding cycle and such but mine get really excited whenever i soften their water.

soft water impact on soft water plants start:


10 or so months later:


Of course hard water plants don't do very well under such conditions.

 

[Redshark1]

My clown loaches vary in total length. The largest female is 11.5 inches. The largest male is 8 inches. Others are slightly smaller than the largest of their gender.

 

[KenSat]

I've kept clowns many times in the past but only have sids currently. If you plan on having a nice planted tank, forget about keeping clowns. Once they get to a certain size, they'll go to town on your plants. You can probably keep some tough plants like anubias, java fern, bolbitis and mosses. But keep in mind they go after the new shoots.

I love my sids because they basically have all the good qualities of clowns with none of the negatives. They live long, peaceful, leave plants alone and will absolutely annihilate any snails in their size range. Also, their small size means you can keep a large group in a reasonable size tank. I have 25 in a 55G tank and they only stay in one corner of the tank where the filter is.

 

[tinylostwine]

My clown loaches aren't that large - maybe 6 inches but so far they are leaving plants alone.

 

[A201]

I think all Botia Loaches have the potential to be plant eaters, but plants probably aren't their #1 choice for a meal.

If your Loaches are eating plants, you might feed algae wafers or quality goldfish pellets. The general plant makeup of such foods might be enough to satisfy their veggie needs.

I feed my Loaches Omega One sinking Goldfish pellets as well as Omega One sinking Cichlid pellets.