Loaches Online Forum

My girlfriend has bought four and is having trouble finding good information on them.

Specifically she's looking for personal experiences, temperament, good/bad companions and feeding (they're picky apparently). She's also come across rumours that they aren't good with long finned fish.

Any and all help appreciated.

Have a look here:

http://www.loaches.com/species_pages/bo ... anmar.html

then you can search the archives above for kubotai and whatever other information you want on them.

hth

In many ways, they are similar in temperment to the "Indian botias" such as Botias striata, dario, histrionica, and rostrata. That is to say they are not that aggressive. They will have minor squabbles with each other and similar species, but otherwise they are on the mellow side.
I have never had them with long finned fish. Mine, however, seem to ignore the rainbows that I keep with them. They hide a bit more than I would like but botias tend to do that as they mature.
Mine are fond of Hikari frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp.
Make sure the tank is covered well as I have heard of them jumping out of tanks given the opportunity.

I have four that spend their time in with my gold nugget pleco. You'll see them peeking out between the rocks quite often. They are constantly chasing each other around the rock complex. I have one dark one which tends to spend a lot of time by himself over by the plants. He's constantly working them and then darting back to the rock pile. Each late afternoon two of them will lay on top of the rock and rest in the current. Quite often they'll tip over and immediately correct their position.

I have seen them go up to another fish and lightly touch it but there's never been any damage done. They will eat zucchini and cukes but not with the zeal that the other loaches do. They'll also eat flake food, BS, BW, and wafers.

I have 3 and they are just the funniest guys to watch. I also have 4 long-finned rosey barbs. The botia don't bother them at all, although that could very well be because all are so active. The smallest one occasionally hangs-out with the rainbow shark also with no problem.

As for food, mine have been happy with almost everything I've fed them so far (brine shrimp, bloodworm, veggies, flakes and granules). They haven't liked the algae wafers or the carnivore pellets. They will eagerly go to the top of the aquarium to eat as well as eat the sinking food.

I hope you enjoy your fish.

i dont have kubotai (i wish i had), but i have similar indian botia. they love hikari sinking carnivore pellets, and they also like sera granules and sera viformo pellets, and JBL granules, and ocean nutrition wafers. they also like brimeshimp and bloodworm. some people have botias that like things like cucumber and melon, but mine arent sure.

i hope you enjoy keeping such lovely fish

Thanks for everyone's help.

Not seen them yet myself except in photos, but they look lovely.

Add your location or tell us and we might point you to-wards a lfs who has some. You never know.

Additional behavior I have observed is that these guys are very good jumpers and like to burrow in the gravel, so provide a substrate that doesnt have pebbles with sharp edges that might cut them. Also provide a tight hood to provide them from jumping out of the tank!

Good luck.

Mike

Handy to know they're not fussy eaters, and I'll tell my girlfriend about the jumping.

Graeme, I'm up in Edinburgh. However I wasn't looking to get some myself as I've no room for more fish. The kubotai are at her house so I'll see them when I'm next there.

Hmm, no jumping attempts ever noticed here (maybe because my tanks are deep...), but they do something else which is quite dangerous: when small, they bury in sand. If you have hollow decorations (I had a hollow fake rock there originally), they will dig a tunnel into it, and they can easily suffocate in a place like this.

As for large fins: the correct statement may be "slow fish with large fins". Problems here involved gouramis, someone else on this forum recently got rid of kubotai's because of them attacking angels. Barbs (and long-finned danios) I suspect are totally safe.