Clown loachs

[papaloach]

Hiya,
Whats the best food to feed my clown loachs make the colour stand out more? Anyone help!

[Diana]

Have a look in the Health Forum, a sticky at the top.
Many people have contributed to several threads about feeding Loaches.

Most people feed a wide variety of foods, including vegetables, many forms of fish and shellfish, snails and algae. Many people make their own, but many also rely on quality manufactured foods from Almost Natural Tropical Fish Food, New Life Spectrum and others.

Avoid foods with fish meal and grains.

Loaches respond to their environment with color changes, too. No matter how great their diet, if they are stressed they will not look their best.

The specific foods that are usually associated with rich colors in fish included highly colored foods like shrimp, salmon, and spirulina. An overall varied diet that includes these foods, and a good habitat where the fish feel secure enough to show off their best colors would be the direction I would work toward for optimum colors.

[redshark1]

Feed a varied diet of quality foods. Mine eat Dainichi pellets, prawns, earthworms, spirulina and other quality flakes, bloodworm, peas, quality granules etc.

Something not to be overlooked is the substrate colour. After tiring of my old gravel I spent ages researching and splashing out on smooth black gravel only to find that my fishes colours darkened considerably and reduced in vibrancy too. I did not predict this as all the literature I saw repeated that the colours of fishes stand out best against a dark substrate. WRONG!

[papaloach]

They like earthworms! I`ll have to try that, Do bait shops do them or just get them out the ground and wash them?
My dad has fine black gravel and i`ve noticed his clown loachs are darker than mine, i`m using just normal playsand thats been washed in a bucket till it settles and all the froths gone.
Dont know if you`ve tryed that?

[redshark1]

Hi, just found my way back LOL! I love sand but not in my Loach tank as I have undergravel filters. I may revert to a lighter coloured gravel sometime in the future.

I dig my earthworms from known pesticide-free ground. The loaches get excited by them. They are able to eat small to medium ones but would struggle with larger ones.