Loaches Online Forum

Hi everyone,

I stopped by my LFS today in an attempt to acquire some more golden zebra loaches for my son's tank, as a (slightly) early Christmas present. Unfortunately, their distributor has not had them available this month, so I was out of luck.

However, they did have a couple of interesting little cuties that they called "goat-faced loaches". I was intrigued, having never heard of such a thing. The species name they had listed was Acantopsis choirorhynchus, which is the Horse-face loach, and bears no resemblance whatsoever to what was in the store tank. To me, they resembled something closer in shape to a small dojo, though I could tell that this obviously wasn't the case either.

Merry Christmas to my son, he's the proud owner of two unidentified little (less than 2") loaches.

I'm wondering if they might be in the genus Cobitis or something similar?

I've taken some rather low quality pictures of them as they sat in the bag, hopefully they are identifiable:





Thanks!

Edit:

Here's one more, somewhat clearer, pic:

Thanks.

I definitely agree with you on that. I missed the Lepidocephalichthys genus in my search; I guess I've learned something new today.

The positive ID is good news, as the conditions in my son's tank should be quite suitable for peppered loaches. I might just pick up a few for my own tank later on.