Clown loach is a very friendly and active fish, which are suitable to be kept in community aquarium together with a school of five or more larger fish, complete with plants, rocks and driftwood for them to hide. They usually grow up to 6 inches in length when kept in captivity and because of their active nature, they will require large aquarium size measuring at least 36” in length (best is 40 gallon) to swim around. Unlike their cousins found in the wild, clown loach in home aquarium can be very difficult to spawn because during their mating season, they can become aggressive and eat up smaller fish. They also gobble their own eggs as well and therefore, one must be prepared to move the parents away to another aquarium in order to ensure high survival of the fish fry.Clown loach is easily identified by its multiple orange and thick vertical black bands covering the body, one at the eye region, another at middle body and another one close to the tail fin. They are unique in the sense that they also have four pairs of barbells located at the front jaw. The usual activity includes digging up sands and uprooting plants and is notorious for eating up soft leaves aquarium plants. Clown loach can be very sensitive at times especially when the water quality is poor as they will easily get shocked and develop ich or white spot disease.
Finally, when it comes to food, they are not really that picky and will accept all types of dry fish food with an occasional mix of live foods like shrimps and bloodworms. They also have a very huge appetite and experts even mention feeding them at least 4 - 5 times a day. However, I do not recommend such feeding frenzy because it will be hard to maintain good water quality and usually uneaten foods will cause proliferation of bacteria leading to disease.
Other aquarium fish species.
