The Weather Loach

[Abyss]

Just wondering if these are still readily available for anyone?

When I was kid, these were everywhere. Big ones, small ones, fat ones...and cheap!

They were my favourite fish as a youngster.

However, they seem few and far between these days.

A shop locally has very, very small and overly skinny ones in most of the time, but have raised the price from a reasonable £2 each to £6 each in the last year! For £6 I used to be able to buy monsters. These are like earthworms.

 

[Kelly-Jo]

Where I am there is a LFS which has them in stock quite a lot of the time. From what I can remember they're medium sized, with a few larger ones mixed in. But I haven't seen them in any other shops other than this one.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

I had to visit two MA stores on the same day to come home with an accpetable size group for a social fish, albeit I perhaps went a little OTT in buying eight!

Perhaps stores are stocking less because of owners having problems when they reach over 20cm and needing a 5-foot or longer tank, not to mention their high bioload demands on the tank's filtration? Perhaps the breeders are running into more genetic issues with these fish, being born with body disfigurements?


Abyss, were you hoping to buy a group?

 

[MBOU]

Mmmmm weather loach are still readily available to retailers, though the prices have gone up a lot and they arent as available as they used to be...

I dont bother getting them in because people dont generally have big enough tanks for the goldfish, let alone the weather loach, if i dont have them in stock, i dont have to let them go to unsuitable tanks.

Besides, they are getting more and more prone to really nasty bacterial infections that spreads like wildfire and when you buy them in bags of 100 or so and one has the infection, you end up losing most of them

 

[Abyss]

Abyss, were you hoping to buy a group?

Yes, a space has opened up in the garage

Have a 6ft in length but only 1ft in height so thought this would be perfect.

Wanna recapture my youth when I had a good number of them.

I don't remember them being hard to care for at all. When I think back...with the stuff I know now, I must have been a terrible fishkeeper, but my weather loaches were always healthy & growing. Even had to put some in next doors pond. Used to see them years later occasionaly but haven't seen one in ages now. (this was like 20 years ago though).

The place that has them all the time (mentioned in first post) isn't great with fish...and if they are becoming prone these days, it would be risky I feel.