What's going rate for a 6-7inch clown loach?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
CL's are all wild caught so they're of pretty much similar quality as RD said.
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I stated 99% in my previous post, as some CL's have been bred in captivity (with the use of hormones) on at least one commercial farm in Florida. I've only seen them once, and that was a few yrs ago. They were barely 3/4", and expensive, and I suspect that the farm/s came to realize that it's much more cost effective to simply import them at 2-3" @ $1.00 a piece, than to breed & raise them domestically.
 
The difference is not genetic...petsmart ones tends to be very thin...even with sale prices I very much not want to get them.

3-4 inchers in my area going anywhere from $25 - $45 each. I just saw 6-7" ones go for $99, $80 each if you buy three. 2"inchers go for about 8-10 dollars.

In my herd of 30+ clowns, I have a mixture of 3-4 inchers and 1-2 inchers. Now they are about 4-5 inch and 2-3 inch six month later. I lost about 3-4 smaller ones in the last 10 month but none of the bigger ones. The smaller ones are more sensitive in my opinion and personally I would get 3-4 inchers for a little extra as they are much more robust.
 
My largest one that I bought from petsmart is really thick for a 2.5-3" CL. It was around 2" when I purchased it. I have some that were barely an inch when I purchased them. The largest one is a darker yellow and has a deeper orange on the fins. I assume that is due to dominance though.
 
In my area the CL's sold at Petsmart are typically quite small, approx 1.5-2", and it makes sense that they are thin as all wild CL's are long, skinny looking & thin, even those in the 10" range. In the wild CL's don't have access to anywhere near the amount of nutrients as they do in an aquarium, and coming in from the wild (and some pretty sketchy holding facilities in Asia) many are harboring internal parasites and/or nematodes.
 
Great info.. I have one that looks silver, he's a runt though. Is that normal as well? By runt I mean I think he's under 1.5".
 
Color wise CL's can morph due to aggression, hierarchy within the group, etc. I have seen smaller CL's "grey out", and other smaller CL's, including one runt that I owned have some of the best color in the entire group. Go figure.
 
Here are a few pics of mine. It just seems to me that some of my clowns have different bodies than the others. The first two pics show my largest clown which has a thicker body. The new batch that I bought seems to be a longer body (3rd and 4th pic), maybe they will appear the same once they put some weight on. The last pic is of the runt I mentioned. He's "head" looks odd to me. Like he has a huge forehead lol.

Clown-Loaches-2.jpg


Clown-Loaches-1.jpg


Clown-Loach-2.jpg


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They just need to put some weight on, but that runt of yours, Mudfrog, does appear to have a slightly deformed head. lol

The photo below shows some 8-10" clown loaches that at the time of the photo had just been recently imported from Sumatra. This is how almost all recently imported CL's look.

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