A Clown Loach Tank? Ideas?

[simonas]

I've been looking more and more at Clown Loach tanks and being more and more impressed with them

They are great fish and probably deserve to be kept as the main fish in more aquariums

I ave a 150g 60x30x24 tank which I'm thinking of redoing and my main thought at the moment is for as many large Clowns as I can have laods of bogwood and plants to create the perfect environment for them

Bearing in mind their potential size what would people on here think is the amount I could keep in my tank. I'd like a decent shoal if possible so I could see them interacty as I bet they are great when happy in a group.

Just as an idea and I'm probably wrong but could I keep a shoal of cardinals in there with them or do Clowns eat smaller fish when they are big themselves? I only ask as my largest clown now which is only 4 inches doesn;t touch the neons he shares a tank with?

any ideas or photos of peoples tank with Clowns in would be much appreciated

Simon

 

[bagu]

cardinals should be fine, my dad kept a clown loach and cardinal tank for 9 years; they got on fine

 

[Thomas McMillan]

I think it's a great idea! I would guess you could keep around ten in that size aquarium with a good shoal of Cardinal Tetras if they'll be safe.

 

[loachman]

They'll generally leave other fish alone. Danios are another great option for mid-level swimmers. I've heard that they'll eat small fish when breeding, but there has only been a SINGLE report of them spawning in a tank ever (so basically it's not an issue).

10 is probably a good number.

 

[tenohfive]

I'd go for some flavour of rainbow as an alternative to cardinals - praecox maybe. You can still get a big shoal, and with their colours and activity it'd look fantastic.

 

[always4lora]

with the praecox don;t be put of with what they look like in the shop as they tend to look boring , they will colour up once in your tank

 

[simonas]

cheers for the comments. I hadn;t thought of them bnut have always wnted a spare tank to fill with Boesmani rainbows as I love them, would they be too big and compromise the amount of clowns I could have?

I'll have to check Preacox out see what it looks like

my external is prety pwerful anway but would they benefit from an extra powerhead in there to give a fair amount of water flow for the clowns?

 

[saltynay]

You may also want to set up a sump or a seperate small tank to breed snails in to add to the loaches diet.

 

[Thomas McMillan]

If you got ten Clown Loaches, you could have about six Boesmani Rainbowfish.

 

[joshjames]

iv always thought clown loaches and bala sharks would look great in a tank
dunno how man yyou could fit in there though because bala's get very big

 

[Davo86]

I'd personally go with an asian theme, with something like 9 Clown Loach, 5 Aplocheilus Panchax, 7 Giant Danio and 7 Leopard/Zebra Danio

 

[simonas]

cardinals should be fine, my dad kept a clown loach and cardinal tank for 9 years; they got on fine

#

sounds good do yu have any pics of the tank?

 

[simonas]

a year on and still thinking of a clown loach tank!! an itch I need to scratch it seems!!!

 

[Wills]

haha in a tank like that I would do clown loaches, rainbows and geos

 

[dave_oddballs]

simon your tank is a fair size so as suggested last year, 10 would be a good round number to go on, i think boesemani rainbows would look brilliant, they are by far my favourite rainbow, id go with ten of them also.
and as wills mentioned a small group of peaceful cichlids would top it off nicely, i have these 4 big geophagus surinamensis that are peaceful and are very good looking, something similar would be good, but if you wanted to keep it an asian theme tank, maybe add a datnioides instead of cichlids? then think of a larger top dwelling fish and thats all levels covered!

http/www.loaches.com/species-index/clown-loach-chromobotia-macracanthus