going to try breeding clown loaches

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wild bill

wild bill

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Apr 4, 2010
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three hills,ab. canada
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We have about 10 cl's and want to try and breed them what size and dimensions should the tank be. We will be awhile before we can start this as our biggest loaches are abour 5 inches and they need to be 7 or bigger. Has anybody tried this and did they have any luck. Also what led to there success I know a long tank with lots of caves and nooks and crannies are needed.
 
Not Possible. Even the scientists who have used hormones were not successful. If it was possible would been done already. Sorry sir.
 
I have heard of it being done twice but I think we are at least a year from starting the project. Hoping that our current cl's will groww at least 2 inches in the next year.
 
If memory serves, there are 2 claims of success -- the first with an excuse of "I can't produce pictures because they are buried in the garage" (that was in 95 or 96, guess it is a big garage) the second was a British guy I believe, and had a successful spawn, but no eggs hatched.

Breeding by hormone injections has been done overseas, successfully. I heard somewhere that they were starting to do it in Florida now too, but I can't remember where I read that.

I doubt your clowns will grow 2+ inches in 1 year. After they hit about 4"-5", growth rate slows WAY down.

Sorry - I don't mean to sound negative, I also have a great interest in getting them to spawn -- I have done extensive reading on the subject. I to am growing clowns out to try to spawn them, for fun. But, bottom line, no one has figured it out -- and those who have ideas and are trying, are tight lipped about it.
 
That is what I kind of what I
thought the money theses things cost it would be like telling evryone how to make gold. I am just going to tinker around at it I have read that along tank and good water flow and sounds like the tank does'nt need to be really deep. If a person could get this working would sure help cash flow then hidee the secret in that other guys garage.
 
Good luck with your future attempts in spawning CLs. Be sure to keep an accurate record of every thing. Including pictures and videos.
 
As EmilyMarie stated there have been a couple of reports, the first guy has indeed still not managed to find the photos in his garage after nearly 20 years, the second was by Colin Dunlop from Scotland, he moved three males and a lone female into a large tank and found thousands of eggs unfortunately the eggs were infertile, this may have been down to the fact that they were moved and the female just released the eggs, this would indicate that a long term setup would be a good choice, also Colin did record his pH level which was down to 4.5 when spawning behaviour was seen.

Hormone induced spawnings are fairly common place now with it been carried out in Asia, America and Europe, I would think the vast majority of clown available in shops are commercially produced now because of colecting restrictions.

The worrying thing is that there have been attempts made at hybridising loaches using the hormone inducement techniques, these fish have already made their way into the hobby all be it in small numbers.

Good luck with your project, to further our understanding of loaches we need more people willing to look at long term goals and spawnings.
 
The one site I found on google said the ph needed was 6 yo 7.5. 4.5 seems awful low but when the time comes may have to give that a try. Thanks for some positive feed back sounds more encouraging.
 
how manny do you have? the reoprts that are there online there have been less then 12 loaches togeather. also there was a few articles on pfk (practical fish keeping) about this subject as well as loaches online. I read alot about my fish and have made it a person goal to also try and spawn clowns. im a little further behind you unfortunatley. However there were some accounts were they do spwan at smaller sizes. search for a form "breeding and export study" on this site. alot of good information there. best of luck keep me in the loop.
 
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