Wholeheartedly agree!
Before I inherited dad's tank and got into the hobby myself, I'd still enjoy sitting and watching his tank when I visited, but now that I know more, I know the stocking was pretty bad. Old school mix of soft and hard water fish, mostly a typical community tank with a trio of black/silver/blue mollies that produced a few fry now and then, gourami, small schools of all sorts of tetra, like 5-6 cardinals, black neons, glowlights, zebra danios. At least no cichlids or sharks.
By the time I took over tank cleaning and read up on the fish he had, I felt sorry for the two huge female bronze cories, so bought four youngsters to bump their school up - had them in a 12g QT for a month, then just before I was going to move them to the main tank, those four spawned! I freaked out, lol, but that got me into breeding cories once NC had calmed me down and patiently talked me through what to do.
But the ones that this post made me think of were the two botiid loaches my Uncle brought over as a gift for my dad for his birthday once. Was years ago, but I remember because they were so cool looking and different from the fish I'd seen before - looked like yoyos or pakistani, but I didn't know that at the time, just thought they were cool looking, and entertaining when I watched them. Dad happily accepted them and plopped them in the tank after floating the bag for a while. They were fun to spot and watch when I visited over the years, clownish, would do things like squeeze into the filter intake and need to be rescued, and chase each other around the tank, or suddenly appear from the jungle of crypts.
My uncle (who was a close friend when my parents ran an aviaries and aquatics business, and has always had tanks himself, so should have known better) also didn't consider that dad had a good amount of yellow apple snails, but the loaches certainly did, and wiped them out. Once they were years old and looked like one thick chunky female and a slimmer male they didn't touch pest snails though. Snails were too small for them to bother going after, they'd just eat the fish food and ignore pest snails too small for them to bother with.
When I took over maintaining and was trying to balance the schools as much as possible I read up on them on Seriously Fish, and watched videos about different botiid loaches interacting in big groups, and the difference was incredible. I watched them with new eyes, and saw that they really didn't get along. The male would aggressively chase the female away, seemed to consider the whole tank his territory, and she often greyed out, a sign of stress in loaches.
I wanted to get some more of the same species so they'd have at least a group of five to form a hierarchy/spread out the dominance displays, but the patterns and colours change from juvenile to adult. It's hard to get comparison photos online, or photos of the two we had! So decided it might make things worse, especially since tank was already overstocked, then eventually lost them when dad turned the filter off "to rest the motor" without telling me, and had a huge tank crash. lost a lot of fish then, but those two passing hurt me the most.
They lived a pretty long life, he'd had them for years. But it wasn't a great life (or death) for them.
I have a soft spot for botiids now, and would love a huge tank with a big group of the mid-sized or small ones. Yoyos/zebras or something, but I'd want to set it up right, with the habitat they'd have in the wild, and in a really good group number, 10 plus. I've been tempted to adopt the odd yoyo or other lonely loach when people are trying to shut down their neglected tanks and rehome their fish, but have resisted because I don't have the right set up. Hopefully someone else who does will adopt those. One day I'll have that loach tank, but the time isn't right.
It's sad and disheartening when I still see them recommended as snail clean up. They've been sold as singles or pairs to do that job for years, and that bad 'wisdom' has stuck around to this day, and it must be horrible for such a smart and social fish.
