Yoyo loach breeding

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Gavril

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I have got two yoyo loaches in my 90l tank with 6 tetra and 3 plates. I noticed a week after I bought them one of them had become gravid. I now know that I have bought a male and a female so have put them into a separate 15l tank for spawning. Could someone help with the fact that she keeps chasing the male loach around?
 
A 15 litre tank is too small for breeding loaches. And they don't just breed when you want them too. Normally you have a group for several years and then one day you see little loaches in the tank. They don't mature until they are 2 years old and females get longer and bigger in diameter than males.

If they are arguing then they probably need more room and more hiding places. Make sure they are well fed.
 
There is far more wrong here. And it is serious because two loaches will not get along and you will have just one before long.

Loaches are very social fish, and absolutely must be kept in groups of five or more. They establish an hierarchy, and will have some quite interesting behaviours and interactions, but with fewer than five this is not going to work. And they need space for the group, a 4-foot (120 cm) tank is minimum, with lots of chunks of wood (loaches like to select their individual "home").
 
Sand substrate, driftwood, subdued lighting and I'd go ahead and keep the temperature high. I admit I've never bred them, I'm jealous. I know they're supposed to prosper in groups but I've known them to grow quite large on their own. I think a steady culture of snails already taking off on the tank would be helpful. This way they can eat whenever they want without you mucking up the tank. A good current wouldn't hurt either, at least a powerhead. Someone correct me but i believe like cories, they could potentially eat their own eggs so it may be that you wanna insert a mop or some moss to catch the eggs and then remove them or keep them divided in the exact same tank/water. Really great fish, yoyo's

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Loach eggs don't normally stick in plants and you never see them actually spawning. So removing plants with eggs doesn't work. And plenty of loaches lay eggs in the substrate.

As with Corydoras, if the adults are well fed they do not appear to eat their eggs or young.

I had 20 young fish in a 4ftx2ftx2ft community tank with big barbs, rainbowfish and some other stuff living in it. The tank had a home made undergravel filter that had 2 uplifts, one on each side of the tank. The tank had about 4 inches of natural brown gravel and lots of plants. The loaches use to spend part of the day under the undergravel filter plates, and the rest of the time in the tank swimming around everywhere. They worked out they could go down the uplift tubes and live under the filter. Every day at feeding time you would see a train of loaches come swimming up and out of the filter uplift tubes. It was hilarious.

As to where they actually bred in the tank, I have no idea. All I know is I put 20 fish in the tank and a couple of years later there were about 50 of them consisting of 20 adults and 30 young that were about 1 inch long.

A friend of mine had a similar experience. I gave him 12 loaches when I got my 20 (got the entire batch at a discount price from a shop). He put them in a 6ft x 14inch wide x 18inch high tank with an undergravel filter and a few plants and some driftwood. He had lots of small tetras and catfish in the tank. His loaches lived under the driftwood. Within 12 months his fish were 6-8inches long (mine only reach 4-5inches, females being bigger than males), and after a couple of years he started getting 1 inch loaches appear in the tank.
 

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