i was wondering if i could keep clown loaches in my 180 gallon (6x2x2) aquarium? in this tank at the moment is one large oscar one largish jag a carpinte and a female loisellei. if you think i can keep them in this tank it would be greatly apreciated if you could tell me an approximate amount of fish i could keep. any help is greatly appreciated and thx in advance
can i keep clown loaches???
- Thread starter D-Train
- Start date
All you can do is try... You have some aggressive fish with size in there so its iffy. The Clowns are going to be pricey cause you will have to buy them large so they don't get killed or eaten. GL
From my experience, Texas' are the meanest cichlids I've owned. I would not try CL's w/those guys.
Clowns do very well with each of the fish you list, assuming they are too large to eat for the two efficient piscavores you list (Jag especially, Oscar somewhat). As far as agression, I have found CLs do very well with aggressive centrals; and can be quite happy when kept in a shoal along with big Texas, Carpinte, Black Belts, Midas and certainly oscars and other medium aggression fish. Mine are always out and come to the surface to eat with the Carpinte, Black Belt, and Synspilus. They are one of the best aggressive cichlid tankmates IMO, as long as they are too big to eat if you have fish eaters, and are in a shoal. The only problem you will have with the 180 is that adding 5 or so clowns will give you a large bio-load with what you have, and will require intense maintenance (water changes) to keep it under control. Only problem other than that is that you might like them and their antics more than the centerpiece cichlids. From a aggression standpoint, the clowns will not be the problem, from a victim or aggressor standpoint. Check out cichlidscene.com for some pics of clowns with big centrals/SAs.
I keep 5 CL's with my cichlids and the cichlids don't look twice at them. They're too busy flaring at each other to worry about the clowns. Hopefully this situation will continue to work. (Oh yeah, I'm up to 6 CL's now if my new baby one lives.)
I would think it could work. If it doesn't don't be surprised either. There are just certain fish that for some reason go by unnoticed, in terms of my fishkeeping. No one ever touched my senegal, bushfish, or my clown loaches no matter what I kept with them (make sure sizes are same though so they can't get eaten) even when I had massive aggression issues in the 90.For the clowns though, I think a bit of this might have to do with the swimming levels for the clowns, as your CA & SA are mid to top, where the clowns unless feeding are bottom, so they don't come in contact as much and therefore are somewhat ignored, where as another midlevel would draw more attention.