12 to 14 is pushing it a bit, I think his are a pretty resonable size. IME clowns don't get up to that foot size until about 8 or 9 years

As far as the plant issues go, what were you using as substrate? Plants just don't thrive in sand or gravel, a nice planted tank is setup with that in mind using a loam mixture or something like eco complete right from the get go.

If you go to the rivers where the clown loaches are from they are actual a food source and they were fishing them and talking about how big they have to be for eating and that coralated to age, anyways it ended up being about 4 years for them to reach the 1 foot mark and big enuf to be worth eating.

in tanks yes they grow a lot slower as we don't feed them enuf, they don't have enuf room ect.. but they are still a fresh water fish that is listed in the books as sutible for larger tanks only, even though store owners will sell them with 5 gal cubes.

Steve

So will a 48" 50g work or am I going to have to make my 75g reef into a clown loach tank for the next couple of years?

I should mention it's not the plants that don't grow, it's the cyanoslime and other crap (beard algae?? or something) that just overtakes it. I can prune the plants and clean the slime of the plants and other items, but the fuzzy stuff on the rocks and other items is impossible to remove. It's like the tank needs a complete tear-down and scrubbing from top to bottom once per month. That's just way too much work, when I compare to the incremental maintenance that the reef tanks require, there's no comparison. I actually find my one FW tank a much harder chore than my multiple reef tanks.

My thinking is that by abandoning the approach to having a highly planted tank that I can go to a tank that is not as brightly lit and may therefore be a bit easier to keep on top of.

So it sounds like I can expect the clowns to double in the next year or two? That would sort of explain why I suddenly find myself wondering if I'm actually noticing them bigger from one day to the previous. They were maybe 1.5" - 2" when I got them, and it took at least two years for them to double from that size, and then again maybe another two years to double from that size. To think that in another two years they will be double from here almost means we're talking about exponential growth.. I thought maybe it would be more of a tapered curve?

Man... I obviously need to bone up a bit on my FW reading. Despite that the tank is ten years going strong now, I have nowhere near the knowledge that you guys have for FW..

You do know the answer to this, you just don't know that you know. :)

If somebody asked you about a reef tank that had a similar issue what would you suggest they look for? Yep, phosphate. Specifically the amount of free phosphate or to be really specific the ratio of available nitrogen to poshphate. Here's a couple case studies:

http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=6078



Think of it this way, full grown clown loaches are 15 to 18 inches long and much more massive than you might think. They are rare to see and probably don't hit this size in aquariums until 15 years old, if ever. I know if you look around you'll see plenty of places that list the max size at 6" but they're wrong. So the 50 will do for a while but you'll be looking at that 75 or bigger eventually so maybe just get it over with now.

When I get some time I'll check out that link, thanks.

I have tried phosphate sponges, out of desperation. It's an only temporary stop gap measure though. It's also a rather expensive proposition. I'm not sure if it's the food or the source water where it's coming from (at one time I was using RO, but gave up on it because it's a lot of work to haul up buckets of RO from the basement). Right now it's so bad that I just want to throw out all the plants, all the substrate and rocks and driftwood and start over from first principles. Run the tank empty with just the two cannister filters (I run both a Rena and a Eheim on this setup) with bleach for a couple weeks before reintroducing the fish.

I recently swapped out my older lights (tank is lit by 2x65) with Jebo daylights and although I don't want to blame the lights, it just seems like it went from bad to worse at that point (although it could just be other factors as well).

I dunno, maybe next time you're in the south (I live in Evergreen) I could ask you to pop by and take a look and see if you can offer any suggestions, I'm seriously at the end of my knowledge as to what to do. I want to enjoy the fish, I'm tired of looking at the tank and thinking "Man what a sludge factory". My nephew has a FW tank with a bunch of tetras and whatnot, and it's ten times the nicer tank, and it's just one of those Eclipse package deals with a "buncha fish" and coloured gravel and a castle decoration sort of thing.

I'll give you a long schabang explanation of the whole deal when I get back from work Tony. Don't give up! FW is EZ.

As far as the plants it can be troubleshot if you want to take the time I could help you fix it. I have a high-light CO2 system, and a low light non-CO2 system, I have been through bad troubles with both of them and now they are both running great. IMO you need a multifactorial approach to deal with it including substrate, macro and micro ferts, lighting balanced to CO2, and an algae-eating crew to include shrimp otos and snails. But if you want to keep clown loaches IMO they are not well compatible with a planted tank because they will eat snails and probably shrimp too.

Yeah... it seems that what it comes down to, the loaches or the plants. Not that I'm against the idea of a nice planted tank, if done well they are amazing setups, just thinking that it's best to separate the goals for now.

Ok given that I need to get the loaches into a bigger system, but can't give them a 90g (or bigger) tank *at this time*, but I could, say, fit into the spot the current tank is in, either a 3' 65g, or a 4' 50g, what's a better choice? The length or the overall volume?

Tri, got any pics of your setups?

I'd choose the 4' for swimming space, the extra volume would be nice but you canmake up for it with water changes.

I agree with Midgetwaiter
Go with the 48" for swimming room
I have 7 clown loaches that school together and the largest is about 5". If he leads the pack then they make sure to go from one end to the other, if a small one leads then they only go about halfway, and as yours are larger I would give them the length to swim.
If you plan on putting them in a larger tank later then maybe add a couple Bala sharks to go with them, mine get along great!!

Or just buy my 5' tank that is for sale!!:biggrin: