I think it is a myth...

[Roxy]

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum but I share your love for clown loaches!
I think they are amazing fish and very entertaining.
When I first got my loaches (3) I was worried that they were sick due to the weired way they slept!
I had no experience with this type of fish but came to love them quickly.

I was browsing the website and found a lot a valuable information but I have to add something that I think is not always true.
In the website it is said that clowns should not be kept in smaller groups than 5 fish.

As I said I had 3 clowns in the beginning but my son (2 years at the time) dumped something, I don't know what into my tank and two of the fish died.
I managed to rescue one and had this one clown for over 4 years and he/she? grew and thrived to app. 12 cm.
I have noticed that as long as I had a group of corey (wells) in the aquarium my clown was happy. He dominated his/her? cave and loved to swim with the corey.
At the end I had about 25 coreys in my tank 5 guramies and a few sword fish.
Just recently my clown fish died because of a drastic temperature change in transport when I was moving. Honestly as crazy as it might sound but I miss the little funny fish.
I had fun watching him in the evening when he swam about with the corey's finding food I had dropped for them.
This clown was crazy about brine shrimp pallets and snails (live).

I just thought I tell my story because in my experience clowns are happy alone as well as long as they have other bottom feeders they can group up with.
Maybe this will help someone some day.

The rule of thumb is that one clown is lonely two are trouble and three is company.
But again my experience proves that one clown can be quite happy and lively I might add in the company of coreys.

Have a great day everyone....

[Martin Thoene]

Whereas it is theoretically quite possible for a Clown to live a long time healthily by itself, it goes against all the natural ways these fish live in the wild. Therefore we recommend totally that Clowns be kept in as large as possible groups dependant on tank size.
They are deeply social animals and you will never seem them being truly themselves unless they have the company of their own kind.

Hermits live without the sociological inputs and interactions from other humans, but they're never exactly "normal" people are they?

Martin.

[grizzlyone]

Hey I resent that...I'm a techno-hermit and I do ok....


Kevin

[Dutch]

There was a thread on this subject a few days ago, there I explained my own thoughts. Like Martin said, it is very much possible to keep only one clown, but that is not how they live in nature. That, for me, is the definitive guide to how a species should be kept in an aquarium. As close as possible to the natural conditions.

More technical, how old was the clown when he/she died? How large is the normal/natural size of a clown of that age? Is that 12cm? (I honestly don't know.) If it isn't, it could indicate sub-optimal social conditions.

[chefkeith]

my experience proves that one clown can be quite happy

If the clown loach had a choice he/she would swim to a different tank to find the company of other clown loaches.
I have proven this.

Over the past 5 years or so, I've had multi-tank water bridge set-up where the clown loaches had a choice in which tank they wanted to stay in. I've changed the tank conditions several times in the past few years to find what they preferred.

Some of their choices-
a) High-Medium light planted tank
b) Medium-low light planted tank
c) low light planted tank
d) Rivertank with high water flow with very low lighting.

In this senario, the clown loaches picked the d) the Rivertank.


After trying the above set-up for about a year, I switched to low light set-ups in all the tanks. Which tank did the clowns prefer then? Again, the tank with greatest ammount of water flow, the rivertank.

A year after that, I removed the rivertank for about 6-8 months because I was in the process of overhauling the loachroom. Which tank did the clowns prefer then? They prefered the tank with the most clown loaches.

One thing I know about clowns is that they like to travel in groups from one tank to the next. Rarely do I ever see a lone clown loach in a tank by itself.

Now I have fewer tanks, but a much bigger main tank, that's 8ft long, with caves to accomidate all 40+ my clown loaches. It's a high flow river tank with very low light. I know what they want, they've had the choice to live separately or in small groups or in one large group. They choose to live in one large group for the most part, but they will split up into smaller groups to go hunting for food, but at the end of the day when it's time to go to sleep, they always end up all together in the rivertank.

Here's a video of my old set-up-
http://media.putfile.com/My-Fishroom-Movie

[zmo63]

chefkeith, that is so interesting! I'm sure you've talked about this set up before, but I must have missed it. What a great way to test all the theories we have about fish's preferences. Of course it all comes down to how they live in the wild.

In that video, your tanks all have the most gorgeous algae (it looks like moss to me, but I think you're referring to it as algae) - did that just happen over time, or did you cultivate it? sorry for going off topic - maybe this should be another thread.

[chefkeith]

That video is almost 2 years old. There was plenty of java moss mixed in back then. I got rid of all of it because it clogged up the filter inlets too often. All the bright green brush algae I had unfortunately isn't around anymore either. Ever since I started using emersed plants I haven't been getting much algae growth. The plants I'm using are hogging up most of the nutrients.

[mickthefish]

keith they were great setups bud, any chance youve got a video of the tanks as they are now bud, i love seeing other peoples tanks.
the river tank is as tanin rich as one of mine.

mick

[Mark in Vancouver]

I hope that Roxy comes back and reads this. The issue with clowns and social behaviour is based on the cumulative experiences of hundreds of fish keepers over decades. I totally agree with Martin.

Not only will your clown loaches do better physically in a shoal of their fellows, but you'll see a lot more of them. It's just like keeping any other social animal.

[Emma Turner]

Hi Roxy,

Unless you have seen a large established group of clown loaches interacting with one another, then you are likely to be under a false impression that your lone loach was quite happy. It would naturally try to shoal with the bottom-dwelling Corydoras - I'm afraid it didn't really have much choice.

If you ever decide to try keeping them again, please allow enough room for 5 or more specimens. I really can't stress enough just how important this is for their long term wellbeing.

Emma

[Dutch]

Unless you have seen a large established group of clown loaches interacting with one another, then you are likely to be under a false impression that your lone loach was quite happy.

Very true! It's impossible to judge the happiness of a fish living under certain conditions, relative to the advised conditions, if a person is unfamiliar with the advised conditions.
When I did my experiments on early life stress in common carp we added a standard tank as a reference, and even then it was really difficult to see any difference.

[chefkeith]

keith they were great setups bud, any chance youve got a video of the tanks as they are now bud, i love seeing other peoples tanks.
the river tank is as tanin rich as one of mine.

mick

Will do. I might be a few days yet, I've been feeling quite under the weather all week. I don't know if I'm still sick or if I'm just going through withdrawl from not having coffee and cigarettes. I wonder if this is how fish feel when they move to another tank.

[newshound]

nothing wrong with cutting the cigs...
but quitting coffee!!!!!
now that is asking for trouble

[Keith Wolcott]

chefkeith- OT, but stick with it! You'll feel better in the long run.

[helen nightingale]

Keith is right, you know. good luck with cutting down. i now have herbal tea - there are so many flavours there must be one you will like.

when you are feeling better, it would be great to see your current setups. i am envious of the space you must have to enable you to have the water bridges. i bet the fish would never oblige and swim through on film