Dissapearing Clown Loach

[kajones]

Something really weird happenned to me today, i'm selling one of my tanks tommorrow so i was moving fish out .I caught one of my clown loach and moved it, but when i went to get the other one it was gone. I searched for ages, eventually i took every single thing out of the tank leaving over the gravel and it was nowhere! i then started panicking thinking maybe it had clung to the inside of one of the ornaments and might be dying, but i checked everything and it was nowhere. I put everything and back and came to the conclusion that it must've died and been eaten by my oscar. Then just a minute ago i looked at the tank and there it was, swimming around large as life! I just had another go at catching it, took all the things that it bcould hide inside out of the tank but again it's nowhere to be seen, i don't get it! It's a good 4 inches long with bright orange stripes, how the hell can it disappear like that? The tanks being piucked up tommorrow so i've got to move it, so annoying!

 

[divisible by zero]

i've had fry disappear and come back a month later, but never a 4" fish.
One of my peacock eels did the same to me too. I bought a used tank that had 2 in it, but i was only seeing one at a time for a few months. One day during a rescaping and cleaning i dug all thru the gravel carefully and looked for it or pieces of it and nothing. Two days later i came down to feed them in the AM and the 2 were laying together in the wysteria.

 

[kajones]

It's bizarre. I know that sometimes clown loach play dead, could it be hiding umder the gravel? I don't want to start digging through gravel really though cos the water will go cloudy and then i won't be able to see!

 

[lilfishie]

i have had a 6" pleco go missing before, turns out he had wedged himself in a small gap in the bogwood, dont want to think how he got in and out of there the gap was less than half his size

 

[kajones]

I found him again and managed to move him finally! I have no idea where he went though, my little boy was convinced he was a ghost fish!

 

[Straydum]

my little boy was convinced he was a ghost fish!

HAHA!

 

[funkyhoney]

After reading this I'm convinced clown loaches are out to mess with our heads. We have a 6x2x2 tank at work that has a 6" clown in it. Honestly, I worked with it next to me for over 6 months without even knowing it was in there, several times we had done full cleans and removed EVERYTHING from the tank and it was nowhere to be seen. Then one day he just popped out of a log and started pigging out on the food! Even my supervisor didn't know it was in there and since we are the only two who ever put anything in the tank he must've been there all along

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Yeah i've had the same thing happen to me two- when i bought my latest clown loachs about 3 months back, i put them in a 5gallon quarentine tank for about 3weeks just to make sure they were carrying no parasites/diseases (petshop clown loaches are pretty notorious for carrying the whitespot parasite).
On the day they were to be moved out into my main tank to go with the other clown loaches, i only counted 2 out of the 3 loaches in the tank- but i swore i saw the 3 of them together in the tank just earlier that day. So i took out everything in the tank, plants, decor, filters, heater etc and couldn't find the 3rd loach anywhere. So as my heart sank i just started to acclimatise the other 2 loaches to the main tank- 10mins later though as i came back in the room, there was the 3rd loach swimming about in the quarentine tank like nothing had happened !

I have no idea where it managed to hide in the tank in the end (it wasn't even like the substrate was really deep enough for it to hide in, its only about a 1cm thick fine sand substrate), moved it to the main tank anyway, but i swear i searched through that quarentine tank high and low so thoroughly, weird ...

 

[xxBarneyxx]

They are masters at fitting into spaces that really should be too small for them. My sister used to have a small one about 4" long, 1" around that would wedge itself into a hole in a peice of wood (the hole only being about 1/2" around). No idea how it managed to get in and out of there but it seemed to enjoy it.

It is very suprising though how such big, brightly coloured fish can hid so well

 

[divisible by zero]

I was just talking to a guy at the place i get my rock from. He was showing me some Desert Coral and telling me he had some in a tank for a long time. He decided one day it was time to do a full cleaning and take the tank apart. After removing the Desert Coral and putting it in a bucket he heard some clanking around and to his surprise found a crab that he hadn't seen in 5 years!

 

[¬wicked¬]

I had a goldfish once that jumped into a tiny hole at the top of the filter casing and was swimming around in the filter for ages!!! I doubt a clown loach could fit in there though lol

 

[Montizuma]

HEY my clown loach just starting doing the magical dissaperiang act. I thouught he jumped out of my tank and my dog ate him but when i put everything back in the tank he was swimming around . I dont know how they do it but its kinda fun looking for him

 

[Caspar]

I have 4 clown loaches in my tank and every so often I am shocked to spot only three of them swimming about, as they normally all stick very closely together. Eventually I spotted a fin coming out of a very small, narrow gap under some bogwood so assumed it had got wedged and stuck in there. I left it until the evening to clean it out but by then he was swimming around quite happily! Since then I've seen it do it quite regularly. I'm soon going to move them all into my 60 gallon tank which is where they were originally housed (I bought it from a friend, she gave me her fish about three months ago to put in my own unused 20g tank while she found time to fully clean the larger one and for me to organise getting it to my own flat - a massive undertaking!).

 

[LIL860]

I have 2 clown loaches one hid for about a week wouldnt come out even for food then a few days later their he was swimming around as if nothing had happened i thought he had died. Im sure they liked to play games with us.

 

[Daveyg1969]

I had 1 of my clown loaches jump out of the water the other day while I was out at work, I came home, and found him dead on top of the filter and he'd been fried by the lights , leaving his partner in crime alone and a bit upset, who is now doing better with the introduction of 2 friends yesterday, will keep an eye on them in future for their gymnastic approch to life!