Loaches Online Forum

Has anyone tried combining pictus catfish with clown loaches? My wife just bought two, and they're in my 90 gallon tank. The clown loaches (5 of them at about 5" each) are going to be transferred there this week. I'll take the pictus out if there's a good chance of fighting.

Don't know if this will help, but my experience is that they won't bother each other much. I had 2 Pictus Cats in my 80g with my Clowns and didn't notice any problems....well, other then I never saw the Pictus???

Skittish things that REQUIRE a school, in my opinion. I think in the 6-8 months I had them, I managed to get one picture, and that's because he thought he was hidden. And that's about all I saw of them. I loved them (gorgeous things), but gave them up so they could be in a bigger school.

Now, remember, that's just my experience, and I hope they are nice and friendly in your tank

Loaches and Pictus are good together, but only if they are about the same size. I would not have the catfish in with small fish like neons or tiger barbs because they are small enough to gobble up .....

I had heard that I would be in danger of losing small fish to the pictus. I wasn't sure, because the same store had clown loaches listed as "slightly aggressive," so I began to doubt their opinions. With the two kinds of fish, there are dangerous barbs everywhere, so I was a little worried, but I'm happy to hear people have had success.

I've been really lucky, the pictus swim around the tank constantly (kinda like the loachy dance, really).

Virtually any catfish with a wide mouth and long whiskers will be predatory, but they'll only eat what fits in their mouth. Pictus are a very lively species. I think they would act as a rather unusual dither-fish because of their high activity levels which the Clowns will interpret as "everything's safe out here".

Martin.

I have mine in with yoyo and clowns, he schools with the yoyo I suppose because of the very similar tail and body markings. there are occasional shoving battles between the clown and pictus when resting but never anything serious. The pictus is 3/4 grown and still no guppies lost.