Loaches Online Forum

Hi All,

First time poster, just want to say great site!
Nice to know there is GOOD info avaliable on these beautiful fish.

I recently picked up the Loaches book , great read imho.

I'm having a bit of a problem right now with one of my tanks and I'm hoping some of your suggestions will help me rectify it asap.

The problem is my clown loaches have decided to start fighting. I had 8 ranging in size from 3" to 5" in my 120 gallon tank (48x24x24) but noticed 2 days ago at feeding time they had been fighting. I had to remove one who was badly damaged, the other 7 seem to be fine.
I put the injured guy in a 10 gallon that was setup for emergencies.
Then I re-arranged the 120 gallon tank to breakup existing territories. Today at feeding time I noticed they are fighting again!!
They are getting plenty of food and are fighting over space not the food, fights seem to take place after/before meals NOT during.

Not sure what to do at this point, I have more hiding spots than I have fish? Yet they are still fighting?
I can't seem to tell which one is causing the fights. I had hoped to set-up a clown loach only tank in the future but this has really got me wondering if thats even possible?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Many thx

I only ever had one problem with fighting in my shoal of seven Clown Loaches.

I realised it was one particular fish.

This fish was the third largest and it put on a growth spurt and started to challenge the dominant fish. It started biting the others harshly and upsetting the harmony which had existed for ten years.

I left things for a couple of months because I was hoping it would calm down but it didn't.

I eventually removed the aggressive fish, took it to my friend at the LFS and peace broke out again.

Everything's been fine ever since (except I'm down to six loaches!).

I sincerely hope you are able to solve your problem.

Thanks for the input Redshark, it seems there not alot of info on clowns fighting.

Anyway, just to update the 7 remaining clowns in the 120 gallon are doing well and have stopped fighting for now anyway...
The injured one is recovering (slowly) due to the extent of its injuries. One of its gill plates was badly damaged in the fighting, all scratches have repaired themselves.
I purchased 2 new smaller friends for him and put them in my wifes 46 gallon bowfront which has 8 angelfish in it. This gave me the excuse to "upgrade" her tank last night and a new 90 gallon will be delivered next week I think the injured clown and his 2 new friends will be quite happy in there once its up and running

Mine once fought but only for as long as it took for them to figure out who was boss. I am convinced having more clowns helped, at the time I only had 5. I now have seven and plans for more when the new tank arrives. They may just be bored. Have you tried lots of different foods?

The extent of the damage sounds worse than the clowns just 'being bored'. My vote goes to redshark1, it sounds like it might be one individual loach who is just a little more aggressive than the others. If the fighting starts up again, see if you can identify a single culprit.

I'm glad to hear that they have stopped fighting 'for now'. Here's hoping they are done for a while!