Loaches Online Forum

I seem to recall from one of the posts regarding upper half dithers that someone had striatas take the eyes out of hatchet fish. I was a bit perturbed to find that one of my black neons was missing an eye one morning. Is this a common problem? Is it specific to striata, and if so is it just individuals that engage in this behaviour?

fellow cdn eh?!?!
ya one of my striata did this to about 6 hatchets...kinda creepy looking at a school of one eyed fish.
I am not sure that it was only one of striata. But I did see one of them do it.

I've never seen B. striata do such a thing, but have experienced this with large numbers of juvenile B. dario in the confines of stock tanks at work in the past. They jumped into the adjoining tanks and took eyes from fairly good sized Corydoras sterbai. Needless to say, we had a juggle round to make sure they can't jump into tanks containing Corys any more. Never seen this behaviour in any other botiid species.

Emma

Oh dear, just when I decided to put together striatas and tetras. Should I rethink this or just use certain types of tetras with the striatas?

Does anyone keep striatas and tetras together without problems?

For those that have experienced this, I'd be interested to hear the number of B. striata kept together when this has occured, the sizes of the tanks where it happened (dimensions), and whether either species were a new addition.

MTS, my parents have had B. striata and B. histrionica (6 of each) together with rummynose tetras, cardinal tetras, black phantom tetras etc for years without any problems. If I remember correctly, the tank is 48" x 15" x 18".

Emma

I have ten striatas in a 55 gal tank (footprint 36x16"). The other fish in the tank are four SAE's. four Otos, six Pangio myersi, and the seven black neons. The tank is sparsely planted, has three roots and a pile of rocks where the kuhlis hang out. The substrate is sand. I feed once a day with flakes (4 days a week) or frozen bloodworms, brine shrimp or mosquito larvae (3 days a week) along with algae wafers or shrimp pellets on alternating days. They have been in the tank since late October without incidence (until now of course)

This is a picture of the tank:

Emma Turner wrote:For those that have experienced this, I'd be interested to hear the number of B. striata kept together when this has occured, the sizes of the tanks where it happened (dimensions), and whether either species were a new addition.
Emma

Emma
The over filtered semi river tank set up 40 gallon breeder (big footprint) had 6 striata, three dario, two SAE, 10 neons and seven hatchets.
Yes the hatchets were new additions. Planted with a ton of Java fern and val. A ton of hiding spots. I'll try to find an image of the tank.
It seems the one striata is very fiesty! I did see it take the eye out of one of my marble hatchets. It also ripped apart a ghost shrimp once that I witnessed.
I bought 5 striata and six months later I was back in that shop and noticed one loach still in the same tank hiding. Poor lonely guy. I bought it and brought it home and I discovered it hadn't grown at all in those six months! My loaches that I brought home 6 months earlier had grown alot. It is still really small to this day.

I updated my last post with a photo of the tank and some info re dimensions. Also, I believe the attack occurred at night - I noticed that the affected black neon was swimming at a funny angle when the light came on - it now behaves perfectly normally.