# Clown Loaches. Trumpet snail eaters :)



## jbyoung00008 (May 16, 2011)

Hey everyone. I thought I would share my experience with Clown loaches and their snail eating ability. A while back out of no where I noticed lots of trumpet snails in my African tank. I had heard horror stories of people losing lots of fish from adding a snail killing product to the tank so I ruled out as not an option. Ive tried a few other fish that eat snails but nothing was working.I built a trap but my hungry Aficans tried endlessy to get into it so I removed it. I have 18 Petricolas so adding Clown Loaches wasn't an option I wanted to try either. After countless attemps of trying other methods I finally gave in and bought a group of 6. I read online and was told by others that Clown loaches will not eat trumpet snails due to their very hard shells. 

Well Im very happy to say. These Clown Loaches have eaten almost every snail in my tank and those buggers were every where in the substrate. Its not unusual to see one of the CLown swimming around with a snail shell in his mouth. I always think I should take a picture but never do. An employee at a LFS told me Clown loaches will suck the snail out of the shell and this seems to be true. I figured Id pass a long this info to others that might be concidering buying a group for the same reason. Eventually I will sell the group but for now Im enjoying watching these guys swim around. Very fun fish to watch and very active. They also Love Zucchinni and I can hear them snap away on it. They are the first to start eating it out of all my fish. 

Cheers and happy fish keeping


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## Vancitycam (Oct 23, 2012)

I think I recall saying this and was met with opposition. Any how welcome to the loach club of believers lol I loved mine and wish I didn't sell them. They truly are a very neat fish. My clowns would always be clicking with excitement and happiness or for food lol they have crazy strong mouths. 

Maybe when u sell I buy or trade?


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## pandamom (Jul 16, 2013)

My family had some clown loaches when I was a kid, I've been resistant to get any again, because I seem to remember them being extremely prone to getting ick. True, or no?


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## TomC (Apr 21, 2010)

And the clown loaches are okay with the African water?


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## Diztrbd1 (Apr 21, 2010)

IME they do suck the snails out and eat them. However if you have any kind of a colony of MTS, you will always have them and never be rid of them using snail eating fish. I have 2 highly active Loaches in my 75. The other day I decided to empty the tank and clean the stupid playsand. What a pain that was. I have a large strainer-sifter I was using to clean it. I would scoop a few handfuls in and run water thru it catching all the snails. I have only got thru half so far and have about 500 baby MTS lol Clown loaches may help get rid of some, but will never be the solution to these pain in the butt snails. If your substrate is only 1 you might have a chance, but those things are really hard to completely iradicate.



pandamom said:


> My family had some clown loaches when I was a kid, I've been resistant to get any again, because I seem to remember them being extremely prone to getting ick. True, or no?


No expert....just my experience speaking but I would say not true. They do stress out easily which i believe makes them more vulnerable. The biggest problem is they are scaleless fish and they have less protection from the parasite. I have only had to deal with Ich one time out of the 3 different groups I have had. The only time I had an outbreak the loaches came from Petsmart. They weren't the healthiest to begin with and probably came from there lol


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## luca (Jun 5, 2010)

Loaches are very cool. I kept some Burmese loaches in the past (used to have a 125 gallon tank), and they were a lot of fun to watch. What size tank would you think appropriate for clown loaches to be _happy_ in?


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