Golden Sucker ?????????????????????????

RedDevil

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Can anyone tell me what kind of sucker fish this is.....and if any one has had any experience with them what they are like.
I keep him in my outside red devil tank and they just ignore him, he or she is around 3" long and very golden.

goldensucker.jpg
 
Its a gold sucking loach, a varient of Gyrinocheilus aymonieri.

They can grow to around 10 inches (though 4" is more common in captivity) and are territorially aggressive, there are some horror stories of them removing the eyes of other fish in the tank and feeding on the slime coatings of large flat sided fish.
 
Yep its a golden loach, used to have one of those. complete nightmare.

At 1 or 2inchs they're not a problem though, but...
I shall tell you my story(silently remembers painful memorys).

I had only been keeping fish for about 10months back then and i admit i was very lucky- despite my lack of knolege i never had any problems apart from a few accidents(landlord getting drunk and dumping a full box of algae tablets into tank for one) and one minor case of fungus.

I started getting a bit of algae in the 2ft tank i had back then so i went down to my lfs and asked if there were any good small comminity fish that ate algae.
The lady who used to own the place back then pointed to a golden loach in a tank that was happily sucking its way across the glass and told me it was a good community fish and didn't exceed 3inchs and was a good algae eater(totall rubbish of course but i had faith in my lfs back then). It was 1inch long.

Ah...Its so sute i thought. So i popped it in my tank(15gal) at the time and it started eating the algae. At first it took no interest in the other fish which were a mix of platys, guppys and mollys at the time but then it started to grow.
It grew over an inch a month and at 4inchs long i woke up one morning to find half a platy.
Next morning, a molly. And a guppy after that. They were horribly eaten up.
The loach on the other hand went around with buisness as usual sucking away at the glass.
The fish deaths continued and at fish death no. 5 i decided to watch the tank at night after the lights had been turned off. To my horror it was chasing everything around in sight and trying to attack and eat them alive. it wasn't like any agression i've ever seen in a fish before- it was just chasing and chasing and chasing....

I went to my lfs and told the woman there what had happened and she told me that they could get a little terotorial but it wasn't anything to worry about, i told her that i thought it was killing my fish but instead she said it was because they had internal bacteria so i ended up going out of the shop with some med.
Loach continued to kill; i tried returning it back to the shop but they wouldn't accept it as well as other lfs's(no wonder though).
In the end they ended up selling the shop a month later after i had lost 7fish.
I ended up buying a 10gal for it because that was all i could afford at the time but 2months later the loach ended up dying in a long powercut anyway.

Moral of the story; golden loachs are not community fish at all.

I didn't hate it for killing so many of my fish cos it was only doing what it would have naturally done in those situations, but i think lfs's should certainly cut down on the amount of these fish they sell and similar loachs as so many of them end up in community tanks.
 
I have one of these in my 72 gal tank.
He is not aggressive in any way shape or form,
maybe that has to do with my green tiger laoches
that boss him about :lol:

(I think I have the exception that proves the rule :dunno: )
 
My son had two of these loaches in his tank, sold to him as community fish. Some time ago we had to get rid of the larger of the two as he was making life miserable for the other fish, they were really stressed out. We were told it was an isolated incident & due to our inexperience we believed this. How gullible we were, the remaining loach is horrible, he thrashes about in the tank sending gravel everywhere. He seems to know that I dont like him & when he sees me he comes up to the glass & stares at me. If I had my way he would be long gone but he's not mine. One of our lfs still says that these loaches are ideal tank mates for any set up. DONT BELIEVE IT you will be sorry. My advice for peaceful bottom feeders would be corys & or kuhli loaches (I have both these) they live happily side by side & dont annoy anyone, also they are so cute & really entertaining.


:fish: :fish: :fish: :fish: :fish:
 
My advice for peaceful bottom feeders would be corys & or kuhli loaches
Difficult to argue with the truth! I'd add Brochis and Ancistrus species.
 
Tanx guys for your input...very interesting...Im only quessing that my Red devils will be OK around this little monster...my Rd's range from 3" to 6" and are pretty agresssive already but i dont want any scarring on my dominant male as he is a great specimen :thumbs: ...so should i get rid of this sucker or what ???? will this be the exception of a peacfull fish in such a mix ???? :/ If anything I reckon the Rds willl eat him aventually...who knows this could be a perfect relationship and combination for aggressive suckers vrs Cichlids.

What should I do ???
I dont want to put him in any other tanks as they are already balanced. May have to con some one in to taking him like the LFS did to me.



B)
 
Golden loachs in general are ok when they're small but once they get to 4 or 5 inchs or get bigger than any resident fish in the tank they become very terotorial and vicious towards other fish, particually long finned/fancy ones.

You could keep him for a bit, but probably he just a timebomb just waiting to go off; i would recommend taking him back to the lfs or rehoming him somwhere else or getting him a tank of his own.
 
i had a cousin of this loach the chinese algae eater petsmart told me that they were wonderful fish and that they grew to be 4 inches long and were a wonderful community fish! BS today i took my CAE to my LFS cause i was getting tired of his crap! they LFS manager asked me what was wrong with him! i said "nothing im just tired of his crap!" so she let me get a couple of ottos as a trade! OTTOS ARE AWSOME! i recomend these wonerful tiny lil cuties to anyone and everyone!
 

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