Loaches Online Forum

Botia Kubatai are probably my favorite botia next to histironicas. they have such a great presonality and a wide pattern variation. the loach with the larger spots has always had a really dark tone to his skin since i've had him. i just thought this picture showed a good contrast of pattern.

Sorry for the focus. why are there such extreme variations in these loaches?



This guy used to be the alpha when i only had a few kubs in this tank. He grew exteremly fast and was always skittish and hid all the time. One of the smaller loaches was challenging him and he whited out and was strutting his stuff after winning. while strutting he ran into the biggest kub and they proceeded to duke it out for almost an hour and a half.

Nice Botia kubotai.

First off, their pattern changes as the mature, just like yoyo loaches. As for why the juvs are different, i guess it is the same reason why there are clowns with saddle back stripes or 4 stripes, its just them.

It would have been easiest to answer your question by comparing your Kubs with others, but sadly the thread that had a large number of photos of various Kub patterns and discussion of them mysteriously disappeared from LOL.

Does anyone know why?

mikev wrote:It would have been easiest to answer your question by comparing your Kubs with others, but sadly the thread that had a large number of photos of various Kub patterns and discussion of them mysteriously disappeared from LOL.

Does anyone know why?

I think this may be what you're looking for:

http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=8932

Emma

Hi Kimura

Another interesting thing I noticed about the Kubotai's is that in some individuals the pattern is not simmetrical. In other words the right side is slightly different to the left. See pix below (apologies for the bad quality)

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd13 ... ift/SX.jpg
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd13 ... ift/DX.jpg

This is the same individual from the different sides.

Have you noticed the same feature in any of yours?

I think asymmetric patterns are fairly common. None of my kubs have identical patterns on both sides- the larger markings tend to match up, but the smaller dots are more random . My cheni also have different markings on each side, although it's less obvious.