Blue Botia

[CentricOregon]

ok so my parent thinks the botia is holding and they wanna breed them but everything I have read says they can't be bred in aquaria? I have tried telling them not to put them in a 2 foot tank but there not for listening.if there not gonna breed in a 4 foot then they arent gonna breed in a 2 foot!

 

[CentricOregon]

bump

 

[Colin_T]

I haven't bred them but I did have a group of Botia lohachata (yoyo or Pakistani loach) in a 4x2x2ft tank. I started off with about 20 and 6 months later when I caught them all out I had over 40 of them. I didn't know they had bred I simply fed and water changed them as per normal and they did the rest.
Although lots of books say fish can't be bred in captivity, if you keep enough of them for long enough, then eventually something will happen. Originally angelfish and neons were thought to be impossible to breed and now they are bred by the millions. Saltwater fishes were also thought to be impossible to breed and now damsels, wrasses and pygmy angels are being bred in captivity.
Try keeping a group of 8-10 of them so you have a good chance of getting male and females and just look after them. If the fish are happy and healthy they will try to breed.

 

[The-Wolf]

you wont get any botia to breed in a home aquaria without injecting them with hormones

 

[CentricOregon]

thats some good advice, i just thought some fish were capable and others werent, it's my parents 2 blue botias I am asking about because they are always together and 1 of them is really fat, she is comstantly like this but the other 1 is just normal size. the 1 that is fat is about 3 times as fat as the other 1 so we started to wonder if she was holding or what.It doesn't seem like any infection as she is going on just fine and eating normally and is still very lively.how do they breed? do they even hold eggs or anything?

 

[Colin_T]

Female fish are generally fatter than males and female Botias get bigger and fatter than the males. My understanding is they breed like barbs and danios, ie: they scatter eggs around in the gravel and plants but I can't be 100% on that as I have never seen it happen.
You can try doing large (70-80%) water changes to simulate monsoonal rainfall and that might help encourage them to spawn. Make sure any new water going into the tank is free of chlorine and has a similar PH to the tank water. A slight drop in temperature (a couple of degrees C) is fine and is actually what you want.
You can try doing daily water changes for a couple of weeks and see if that gets them going.
You can also try getting other fishes in the tank to breed and when they start breeding they release hormones that might encourage the Botias to start breeding.