Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
other loaches
- joey (joe watson)
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Location: Portlaoise, Midlands
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this might help
www.americanaquariumproducts.com/LoachesBotias.html
stay a mile away from skunk botia IMO
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- joey (joe watson)
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i know 6-10 is the best group size of each species, but would 3 or 4 of each of the above work well together??
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- Gerry The Chip (Gerard)
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Gerry
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- SSS (Sion S)
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- Viperbot (Jason Hughes)
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I keep a group of four polkadot loaches in with my tiger barbs and think they are great. They stay relatively small and are mildly belligerent so can hold their own with larger loaches. Mine were housed with larger tiger loaches when i first viewed them and they were fine. Like clowns, they have spines under their eyes that they use to do battle. Females tend to be larger than males but the males have more bright spots. Apparently, no two polkadot loaches have the same pattern which if true, is kinda cool. They will scrap amongst themselves now and then and feed well. I give them bloodworms, wafers and they also suck up the bits of food the tiger barbs miss, if any

Jay
Location: Finglas, North Dublin.
Life
may not be the party we hoped for, but while we
are here we might as well dance.
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- joey (joe watson)
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- Ma (mm mm)
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Here's a couple of mine, I have 6 about a year, very slow growers great with CLown Loach, they do the dance together sometimes and happily scoff almost any food, sprouts peas swede cabbage cucumber hikari and variety wafers frozen stuff you name it they eat it.
Mark
Location D.11
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- joey (joe watson)
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wierd backwards shimmy in that vid, do they express odd behaviour like some clowns do?
Location: Portlaoise, Midlands
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- stretnik (stretnik)
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www.loaches.com/species-index/schistura-balteata
Kev.
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- joey (joe watson)
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is the other loach near the goby's a zebra loach? how are they?
also whats the plant with the long thin crinkly leaves?
sorry for all the q's i'm bored tonight
Location: Portlaoise, Midlands
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- Ma (mm mm)
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good stuff mark, what i was looking for, a loach that'll interact with the clowns and looks good to boot!
wierd backwards shimmy in that vid, do they express odd behaviour like some clowns do?
They've never bothered another fish and do the side by side swimming thing with the clown loach too, they do not squabble with the Clown at all just amongst themselves and always harmless.
A very busy little fish indeed.
Mark
Location D.11
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- joey (joe watson)
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- Viperbot (Jason Hughes)
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Jay
Location: Finglas, North Dublin.
Life
may not be the party we hoped for, but while we
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- stretnik (stretnik)
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The first Fish are www.loaches.com/species-index/schistura-balteata and the crinkly leaved plant is called an Onion Plant but it isn't an Onion by any means, it's a Crinum lily, just a crinkly leaved form.
Kev.
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I have 5 of these and I adore them, trouble free and active.
www.loaches.com/species-index/schistura-balteata
Kev.
sumo loach are lovely little fish
there's some cool looking fish in that vid
the little orangey red ones spinning around each other are really nice, haven't a clue what they are ?
the little genghis khan goby / darter looking type fish are really nice aswell
do you know the names of the above (very badly described) mentioned fish ?
you never see anything like them in the shops...
Des
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- joey (joe watson)
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cheers viperbot, i'll try that as i cant pick between the 2 species so may as well get a few of both!
Location: Portlaoise, Midlands
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