going to try breeding clown loaches

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
wild bill;5131867; said:
Sorry about the goof up on the size thing there must of misintirprited. That is odd what you found I thought Borneo was all jungle as that is where the orangutan is from. This info would indicate there must be some cold water moving about at sometime of the year one would think. May be the runoff is what triggers the spawn and who knows what food could come down in that cold water. There could be fry from salmon like fish or maybe even a flood of fresh water shrimp which I know ours love to eat. I still think maybe some of what we are being told about the cl is maybe to prevent the aquarium spawning. Would be an effective way of keeping a monopoly on the sales market as this advice does not hurt the loaches it just prevents the spawning cycle of their life. Like I have said ours have been really resiliant tough fish showing no stress where other tough fish have. This is why I swwm leary to believe all we are being told about them.
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I am sorry Wild Bill, I thought the smilie would make it clear I was joking. The google map was just plain white, they obviously haven't mapped that part of the world yet.

I was also having a look at some of the adventure holidays on offer there in the national park that covers some of the area where the clown loach lives. it is pretty wild country and many of the rivers start off in uphill lakes. I am not sure if that means that a natural sping forms the lake which then overflows into a river or what.

On that basis I am not sure where the peat bog fits in although other sites talk about an area of ten foot thick peat beds which flood with the rains. Perhaps these lay alongside some of the rivers or lakes. I will carry on seeing what I can find but information is scarse .

I suspect, at the end of the day, that your thought about special food being available there at that time is right but I dont know what that would be. Borneo lies acrodd the equator so maybe it is a hatch of moskito lava for the babies or something.
 
Bill, for a starter you should determine whether your loaches come from West Kalimantan, or Sumatra. If you are going to the trouble of attempting to breed them in captivity there's no point in mixing georgaphicl variants. (that differ in genetic make up)

If you aren't sure how to tell the difference see post #60 in the following link.

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=204026&page=6

Sentarum Lake and the surrounding satellite lakes are part of the Kapuas River basin, it is in this district of West Kalimantan where the vast majority of exported clown loaches originate. During the rainy season the Kapuas River feeds the Lake, during the dry season the Lake feeds back into the river. At the peak of the dry season the lake becomes a large expanse of dry land, with only scattered small pools of water remaining. The Sentarum lake district is known for it's high peat content, and low pH. The water is high in dissolved tannins and humic acids which accentuate the reddish/orange colours in the fish. One can see a similar effect on the color of the native Red Arowana, and Betta spp. that are found in these same bodies of water in West Kalimantan. The blacker the water, the more intense the color red one may see in various specimens in the wild.

Clown loaches collected in Sumatra are much paler in comparision, and do not have near the market value as those in Kalimantan.

With regards to breeding clown loaches in captivity sans hormones, IMO if this was possible (at least on a regular basis) I suspect that breeders in SE Asia would have figured out the "secret" a long time ago. Especially when you consider the number of commercial fish farms found at the mouth of the Kapuas River in the Pontianak area.


BTW - getting clown loaches over 4" from SE Asia isn't an issue, lots of 8-10" clown loaches are exported on a regular basis. The export ban does not exist in all parts of SE Asia.


HTH
 
RD.;5134244; said:
During the rainy season the Kapuas River feeds the Lake, during the dry season the Lake feeds back into the river. At the peak of the dry season the lake becomes a large expanse of dry land, with only scattered small pools of water remaining.
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Hi
Can you tell me where that bit of information actually comes from ? ( not that I am doubting it ) was it in an article, scientific paper, or personal observation ?
 
I've never been to the island, so you can safely rule that out. :)
I can't provide you with the exact sources from when I originally wrote that, as I honestly don't recall, but that info is fairly common knowledge & there should be a ton of information available via google.

As an example ......

See figure 2.2 & 2.3
http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/fire/pdf/pdf53.pdf


Common tourist type info found on the net, which also decribes this area during the dry season.

http://indo-island.com/sentarum-lake-national-park/



Some interesting reading on the fishery of this area. (clown loaches are referred to as ulang uli)

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+fishery+of+Danau+Sentarum-a093827524

The rainy/dry season & its implications are also briefly discussed.
 
I'm not sure what the reasoning was/is, but it appears that some of the stickies in this section have been purged over the past couple of years.
Here's a past discussion that some of you may find interesting.

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=175030&highlight=captive&page=5

In post # 44 I show a couple of pics of captive bred (hormone induced) CL's from one of our LFS. (from a couple of years ago)

Bill - take a close look at the size of those captive bred CL, then factor in another 6-12 months before anyone in these parts would be remotely interested in purchasing them. Not exactly a gold mine when you consider the time & work involved to bring them to market. That LFS had those tiny juvies listed at $17.25 a pop, and a lot of them died before they were sold. At that price you can buy acclimatized wild caught loaches in the 4-5" range.

If you're going to attempt to do this, you might as well view your experiment from a non monetary position. I suspect this is why no one in SE Asia has ever put any serious effort into breeding CL's in captivity, it's much cheaper & easier to simply purchase wild caught specimens.
 
That article was very helpful I woould guess our loaches are the ones in the first photo. This also makes me still think now the tank with peat in it maybe critical part of getting them to breed. I can't believe the knowledge you have rd I'm glad you live close by. It sounds like with this peat tank it will have to be set up a long time to really saturate the water with the tannin maybe even a few tea leave could be added to help the formula match home a little more. What ever is missing I think is so obvious it is being over looked in the formula.
 
Another thought occured to me is there any chance with the hybrid loaches that they are sterile therefore no spawning. As we know that several hybrid cichlids the males are often sreile. Another possibility people are over looking is that the loaches are spawning but many are in community tanks and the eggs are eaten before they are ever seen.
 
Bill ....... 99% of the clown loaches being kept in captivity are wild caught, not hybrids. Also there are a lot of people out there with species only tanks, in the past myself included, no spawning activity, and no eating of eggs. This is not nearly as simplistic as you seem to think. As I stated previously, if there was an easy way to breed CL's it would have been done by commercial breeders in SE Asia a loooong time ago.


I would proceed with caution if/when you begin attempting to tweak your water parameters. Going from a high TDS (such as your water) to a lower TDS can be very stressful on fish. If done too rapidly the fish won't be able to reach equilibrium quickly enough and can die from osmotic shock.
 
If you guys manage to pull this off, I will be first in line to buy your loach fry - but I tell you now that it will be very difficult to do this as you have to try and replicate natural conditions. I haven't dug too much but you may not be able to be successful unless you do research on your own as there is little to no information about this. You might have to go out to Borneo and Sumatra and research the clown loaches' habits for over a year.

That said, here's some info that may or may not be helpful:

http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?ID=10897&AT=clown+loach

The link below has papers referring to Clown Loach reproduction, the first paper looks like it may be useful but I dont know how to access it:

http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/search..."reproduction"&ds=jnl&ds=nom&ds=web&g=s&t=all
 
I understand that was kind of wondering did you ever try doing a stagnant pond expierament with your loaches. It seems from alot of the info comming here that this may hold benifit toward the end of the spawning cycle. If a person had them in a tank with super filtration and water flow then slowly thoughout the year cut back water flow and the filtration to pond like conditions. Then have a couple of big sponge filters that are well cycled and place them in the water and slowly increase the temp and lower water level a bit. You will want do all of this in the tank with the peat bottom and plants and driftwood. At this point try the feeding of the live fish snails and scuds what not. I know this sounds similar to breeding gouramis but they do live in similar areas. These are just my thoughts but as I said I think ours need to grow a little more and I have to try and sex them. Thanks for your info I think every little bit of help here is huge in contributing to success in this project.
 
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