My loaches are eating all my ornamental fish

[vealboy]

77 degrees is too cold for clown loaches. Their water should be at least 82 degrees. I keep my clowns at 86+ degrees with no problems, no aggression of any kind.

Huh. OK, I guess I did not know that. Oh and when I came home last night I did see evidence of a loach attack. One of the Red-Eye Tetras was a little sideways, and missing one of his eyes. So my theory on water temp being responsible for the attacks was wrong.

[Donna]

I'm confused. The loaches ARE the ornamental fish! Everybody else is just an extra on their movie set.

[vealboy]

I'm confused. The loaches ARE the ornamental fish! Everybody else is just an extra on their movie set.

It's funny because it's true!

[Keith Wolcott]

Just a couple of comments.

1. Are you feeding enough? I feed my growing clowns 3 to 5 times per day and they are hungry all of the time. They get a large variety of frozen and dry foods. They are about 4.5 inches long now. Be careful not to overfeed, but be sure that they are getting enough food.

2. You say you added small fish (cardinal tetr). As Diana has pointed out on this forum, if they are 1/6 of the size of your larger fish, then the larger fish may well view them as prey. I would say that at even 1/5 the size, there might be problems of chasing and harassing.

It sounds like that you are mostly ok with #2, but the fish that you added that were at most an inch long are possibly a little risky with a 4 inch clown. So I don't know if the above are issues for you or not, but if you do avoid the above problems, Clowns are generally really quite well behaved.

[cheken]

i see your point on the size issue mine are quite large, i have raised the temp to 25cfrom 22c as i found that they became inactive so good news for the small fish but bad news for the entertainment (watching them swim around etc) they seem much happier with a temp around 25c plus they have left the other fish alone. but i wont raise it anymore i would like to add once again i feed them regularly with a variety of food

[retrofish]

Just a couple of comments.

1. Are you feeding enough? I feed my growing clowns 3 to 5 times per day and they are hungry all of the time. They get a large variety of frozen and dry foods. They are about 4.5 inches long now. Be careful not to overfeed, but be sure that they are getting enough food.

That's a very good point. A variety of interesting foods fed at regular intervals might keep your loaches from viewing their tankmates as prey.

[vealboy]

Just a couple of comments.

1. Are you feeding enough? I feed my growing clowns 3 to 5 times per day and they are hungry all of the time. They get a large variety of frozen and dry foods. They are about 4.5 inches long now. Be careful not to overfeed, but be sure that they are getting enough food.

2. You say you added small fish (cardinal tetr). As Diana has pointed out on this forum, if they are 1/6 of the size of your larger fish, then the larger fish may well view them as prey. I would say that at even 1/5 the size, there might be problems of chasing and harassing.

It sounds like that you are mostly ok with #2, but the fish that you added that were at most an inch long are possibly a little risky with a 4 inch clown. So I don't know if the above are issues for you or not, but if you do avoid the above problems, Clowns are generally really quite well behaved.

Perhaps I am not feeding them enough, and I could probably offer a little more variety to them with more veggies. They do have a voracious appetite. While doing a WC today, I also noticed that one of my new cichlids (a steiny juvenille) is missing too. Not sure when that happened. Other than the tankmates, I do feed them sinking wafers, sinking Omega One Shimp pellets, bloodworms, tubifex worms, algae wafers, and they even eat the flakes, and munch on the plants in the tank.

I added back the large rocks I left out after the last WC, I hope that it helps the smaller fish with places to hide, and maybe will stop the clowns from eating their tankmates.

[Diana]

Try increasing the number of meals per day for growing fish. If you are not home all day to do this you can look into automatic feeders that dispense food from individual sections. Load each section with a different dry food for nutrition and variety.
Offer the perishable foods when you are home to prepare and serve them. Some fish will be very active at night, after lights out, so a serving of vegetables late at night can last a long time without fouling the water, and give these nocturnal fish something to eat.