going to try breeding clown loaches

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This thread is getting good. Lot of positive thinking going on here :)

I am inclining more to the still pool for breeding despite my first thoughts of acting like trout.

Still, thats ok. When the time comes I can use different tanks to go both ways...... ( ye gods, did I just say I could swing both ways ? )
 
OK, so lets sort out the size issues first. Many people are saying they need to be big, maybe ten inches plus.

I have been doing a ot of reading and have found three facts that wold suggest otherwise.

1, The local government ban the export of fish over 4 inches. This would suggest that they are reaching breeding potential at that size.

2, it has been said in kearned papers that fish stay in the faster flowing rivers all year round until they are 4 or 5 inches long then they start migrating upstream at the startof the wet season to their breeding grounds ( this would be at about 3 years of age )

3, A swedish fish keeper disected his 5 inch fish when it died accidentally and found it full of roe.

So I am happy that clowns will breed at five inches and three years old.
 
Clown House;5113805; said:
OK, so lets sort out the size issues first. Many people are saying they need to be big, maybe ten inches plus.

I have been doing a ot of reading and have found three facts that wold suggest otherwise.

1, The local government ban the export of fish over 4 inches. This would suggest that they are reaching breeding potential at that size.

2, it has been said in kearned papers that fish stay in the faster flowing rivers all year round until they are 4 or 5 inches long then they start migrating upstream at the startof the wet season to their breeding grounds ( this would be at about 3 years of age )

3, A swedish fish keeper disected his 5 inch fish when it died accidentally and found it full of roe.

So I am happy that clowns will breed at five inches and three years old.
Click to expand...

Haha, sounds like i have red the same pages as you. I agree with you, although I won't know for sure until i have bred them ;)

Yes, it is a good goal to aim for...no point trying to breed guppies...or convicts, etc...they breed themselves. Challenges are good motivators!
 
I can't believe this topic has taken off like this either it sat dormant for a couple of months. Now I feel like I'll have to share my gold mine if we can make this work[lol]. If they can breed at amaller size than I may be closer than I thought and get a tank devoted to them. I am really leaning toward the warm still water theory now. It make sense have the fry hatch out at the end of the dry season to cache in on the food of the wet season not unlike many predatory mamals do.
 
Bill, sorry if you've mentioned it above, but what does your tank look like? How big?
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"Start of the wet season" suggests you keep them in fast, hyper clean @ 28C water for 4-5 months, then turn the power-heads off and add leaves @ 29-30C for a month (during which time you collect 5x 50Gal drums of rainwater) then plumb rainwater @ 25-26C into your system for a couple of repeated >50% water changes over a week or two while you overfeed in a set-up with heaps of live snails & prawns & small fish, and filamentous plants and moss as laying media- and set up the video camera.
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I'm way too excited about this... Need to stop (&$#!!) decaf
 
I actually started this to see if anyone had bred them. Had read about the guy in sweeden and thought maybe we could breed them at home. The tank ours are in is a 150 4 foot tank with numerous cichlids we only got the clown loaches because they are fun to watch. Then started to notice what they sell for and thought hey maybe could be money if we could raise them. Now we have a second tank with some 2 inchers in it neither of the tank have powerheads just canister filters pumping water to ripple the surface. Though awhile back did discover the clown loaches are not as touchy as what we hear. Our 150 had a build up of nitrates and other fish in the tank were showing ill effects but the loaches looked great. However we are now wanting to start a loach tank and will use ideas from here and see what happens. You know everyday we learn something new and with my wife and I fairly new to the hobby we want to learn. I do'nt know when you loose rookie status in fish keeping but I still consider us greenhorns as we have only been in it 3 years this March. We are loving every minute of it and may have gone overboard with tanks as we now have 63 up and running.
 
There is a thesis on the web by some unknown student at the university in Singapore. He says a couple of interesting, if contradictory, things.

In one part of the writeup he says that the breeding grounds of the CL are unknown, even to the locals. In another he says that the fish, once they have reached 4 or 5 inches, head upstream at the start of the wet season to breed.

I need to reread the paper as I read it amoungst many others but I think he was saying that they head into small acidic backwaters and end up in small pools in the peat bog.

Couple this with a write up about breeding the dwarf chain loach where they were seen to be swimming frantically about ( and possibly dropping eggs ) in a large shoal of thirty plus fish and we may have a start point.

There are several interesting papers on the web which provide some food for thought. The problem is that these papers must be fairly well known to many professional breeders already and they still haven't had any success.

There is something else going on, or that needs to be going on..... Question is what ?
 
It's by no means common knowledge (highly guarded trade secret) but CL are being bred commercially in Asia using hormone injection. U-Miami also has done a lot of work and figured it out, but you have to be a registered Florida farmer to get any info. There are also people in Eastern Europe. They're all actively keeping these prices high.

Notwithstanding, it is valuable to figure out the hows and whys of the natural breeding processes. I'd spend $10 for one of yours over $5 for an injection-bred one. I'm sure this all affects quality as well.
A
 
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