Breeding loach

Anyone had any success at this?
I have been considering upping my numbers of sids now that they are out of the community tank. I have a lot of other stuff going on at present but the girls are pretty heavy with eggs. What are the chances of success if I just put a bowl of marbles in the tank and suspend a couple of spawning mops over it? (I'm going to have a go anyway ).

No snails, shrimps or corys in this tank although now that they have been in for a few days the microdevario kubotai have plucked up the courage to go all the way down to the substrate to feed and of course there are 6 sids. LFS man says he has never heard of anyone successfully breeding them in captivity and will take whatever I can provide - but I have no interest in being a breeder. If I manage to get 4 that's great - more than 10 and I will need to get rid of the balance.

Hmmm - just been for a closer inspection of the tank and some of the rasbora are gravid too. Could be an interesting experiment

I'm with your LFS man. Never heard of it being done. This would be a Golden Feather in your cap. Keep us updated.

I had Botia lohachata breed in a tank but I wasn't doing anything to breed them.

I had about 20 of them in a 4x2x2ft tank that had barbs, tetras, a rainbow shark, whiptail and twig catfish, some rainbowfish and a few other bits.

There was a undergravel filter that had 2 uplift tubes (one on each side). One uplift tube had a power head pumping water under the filter plates (I was doing a reverse flow undergravel), and the other outlet had nothing on or in it. There was also an external canister filter on the tank (Fluval 303).

The tank was heavily plants with plants growing in the gravel and Water Sprite on the surface. The lights were on for 16 hours a day and the tank was dark for 8 hours.

The water temperature fluctuated between 20-30C. I had heaters set on 20C for winter and in summer the water temperature went up to about 30C.

I did a 50-90% water change each week and fed the fish a lot of different foods ranging from dry sinking pellets, flake, frozen and live foods.

The loaches used to swim down the uplift tube and live underneath the filter plates some of the time, and in the tank other times. Feeding time was especially interesting because the loaches were usually underneath the undergravel filter plates and would swim up the uplift tube one at a time and spill out into the tank. It was a steady stream of fish coming out the uplift tube one at a time because it wasn't wide enough for more than one at a time.

After a couple of years there were lots of smaller loaches (about 2 inches long) with the bigger ones that were 4-5 inches long. When I took the tank apart there were over 50 loaches in it.

A friend of mine had the same loaches at the same time, and his displayed all the time but he had heaps of tetras and barbs in the tank and no young ever survived. He also didn't have many plants in the tank.

---------------------------
The main thing with breeding loaches is to have a group of 10 or more if possible and keep them for a while. Most species take a couple of years to become sexually mature (B. sidthimunki should be mature in 1 year) and they need to be kept in groups. Most people only buy a couple and the loaches are never really happy.

Yes I know they are difficult which is why if it happens it happens and no stress if it doesn't. I know they are mature which is why I had to move them. I have had them for around 18 months and they were very young when I got them. I did see them spawning in the community tank - but that has loads of corys so the eggs would have no chance. Now the females are about 5 times as "fat" as the males. The marbles are only to give the eggs a better chance of not being eaten as their new tank does not have too many plants yet.

Temp range is set between 22 and 25 and now that summer has gone I often get most of that range every day. I may turn the top of the range up to 27. Its not cool enough yet to drop a full 5 degrees overnight. pH 6.5 and water super soft (i.e. RO ). They already get 75% weekly changes. Interesting comment on the tubes, I do have some black PVC piping in the garage ...

There is a chap that lives near me and we were both on a regional fish forum which has long since gone. He managed to breed sids.

Oh the things we do for our fish.
Celebrated finishing my exam by making a couple of woolly pom poms which are now in a mini tub of marbles in the bottom of the tank. Think I may need to thin them out a bit

If the pom pom is for the fish to breed in (a spawning mop), you should change the colour to green or brown. Dark green or brown mops work better because they are more natural in colour.

Colin_T said:

If the pom pom is for the fish to breed in (a spawning mop), you should change the colour to green or brown. Dark green or brown mops work better because they are more natural in colour.

Click to expand...

Ah the joys of on-line shopping . It seems the corner store haberdashery has become an extinct species. This has been sitting in a drawer for a couple of months and was bought as green wool, for exactly that purpose. It did look green in the bag. It looks green this morning but the room is pretty dark and the tank lights are off. The danios are happily swimming through it and I spotted a sid sleeping on it last night.

Based on what happened in the community tank they will spawn anyway so hopefully some will end up in the right place and I can move the whole contraption into a tub.

Colin, I recently read an article (can't find it again ) that suggested that loaches spawn in the surface plants in the wild to allow the eggs to float downstream before sinking. Do you know if this is correct? If that's the case I may be better off just letting the frogbit go wild. That certainly worked for my pencilfish in the other tank. I have now spotted at least 5 unintentional juves in there - I suspect that happened while I was on holiday and not trimming the roots.

Temp is back up to 27 and its been overcast / raining all week.

I haven't calibrated this laptop so the colour of the picture might be off. But it looks blue and purple on my screen

I have never heard of loaches spawning in floating plants and I doubt it happens because most loaches live in moving water. Floating plants would simply be washed downstream away from the loaches so it's unlikely they would spawn in them.

I can say that Botia lohachata do spawn on the bottom of the tank. I gave a friend some B. lohachata and when his fish matured they were regularly seen displaying and quivering next to each other over slight depressions in the gravel. The depressions were shallow and only a 5-10mm deep but the biggest female would sit in these depressions and do the hippy shake with several of the smaller males. The adults would sit there for a few seconds after that and then swim off, and other fish raced in and ate whatever was there (presumably the eggs).

Colin_T said:

I haven't calibrated this laptop so the colour of the picture might be off. But it looks blue and purple on my screen

Click to expand...

Your screen is fine. It looks that way in the tank too

Got home this evening and the 4 females are skinny (well ok, not fat). Can't see any sign of eggs or fry but as I am too late to move them out I'll just wait and see, and try not to disturb the tank too much. FIngers crossed.