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Plants that will survive clown loach curiosity

I have three largish clown loaches in my Vision 180 planted tank.

This is them this morning doing their rounds...
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And I have the following plants, that clown loaches not bothered with at all. My substrate is Fluval Stratum on top of Unipac Limpopo black sand.

HC carpet
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"glosso"
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Can't remember the name, but completely cover a piece of wood.
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????
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???
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These two do attract loach interest...

This anubias has a few inverted "U" shaped holes in its leaves caused by the loaches "clicking" on it. Generally left alone. See bottom right of picture.
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And these swords have been attached by the loaches, cutting holes and generally having a nibble.
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I don't seem to suffer too many plants being uprooted and floating free, certainly not an issue once the plants have rooted.

However, if I had my way (kids won't let me) I would get rid of the loaches for a couple of reasons.
  1. I know they will get even bigger than they are at the moment.
  2. Now the tank is extensively planted, they spend most of their time hidden away at the back of the tank under all the plants and very rarely venture out, when the lights are on. When I had only a few plastic plants and a simple rock cave they spent a lot more time "in view".
 
3 clowns is considered a minimum according to lfs. After keeping them for 2years i consider 5-6 as a minimun, because when i only had 3 they never came out
id add 3 juveniles to tank and try hand feeding them straight away. when the older ones see its safe they may also start hand feeding from you too clowm in profile pic is about 7" and likes to sit under slate in pic and look out
and uow do i upload pic to this thread
also if you do want to get rid ill have them
 
were your clowns in before or after tank was planted? mine show great interest in new things in tank. your 6th photo looks like cabomba, ive had that in there and it grews very fast(doubled in size in 2 days) and 5 loaches at the time pulled it out in less than a week. bogwood in photo had java moss on it the clowns started unpicking thread and my female bristlenosed plec ate the moss. she may be another thing to consider when selecting plants. she wasnt there when cobomba was pulled up
ill add photos of remains of planted section in left hand corner when ive cleaned glass this afternoon
 
After doing more searching around it appears the only plants suitable for happy active clown loach bigger than 5" are anubias and java fern , and these are better if tied to small bogwood so they can be pushed around instead of taking damage
Low light plants are a must in a clown loach tank because clown loach are easily stressed by high light
Anybody else got any suggestions for low light plants with tough stems and leaves
Im going to feed mine more veg in an attempt to stop them eating plants
 
Crinum Calamistratum won't be touched either.
Any species of plants with soft/bright green leaves may suffer by clown loaches but that depends on your clown loaches, what they are fed with and the tank decoration itself.
When I got mine, in a few days they quickly destroyed my amazon swords, aponogeton ulvaceus and hydrophila. They made them look like a mesh, I had to chop them down.
They carried on like that until I started feeding them lots of food, including increasing the vegetable diet to 50%. Then they stopped and haven't punched a hole for almost a year and I still have the same plants but they recovered. So I sometimes think that plant eating clown loaches either need a lot more veggies in their diet or people underfeed them. They are young babies after all and will be so for years if we live long enough.

Here are mine:
 
Thanks for info on diet my largest eats anubias flowers in one bite. adding more vegg to their diet will probably improve their overall health aswell as stopping them eating my plants

Do you think a pop bottle over the top of new plants would help them become established because fish have a habit of rearranging new items in their home
 
New life Spectrum pellet food is rich in vegetable,fruit,and was enjoyed by clown loaches I have cared for.
Still did not prevent them from uprooting any and all substrate rooted plant's in their search for food,snail's .
Floating pennywort was used to diffuse light and anubia attached to wood were the plant's I chose.
Fishes enjoy fairly good flow which I achieved using Koralia powerhead's,in addition to large filter with good GPH rating.
Their favorite food,hands down,,was chopped earthworm's or red worm's I caught from pesticide.herbicide free lawn, and grain elevator's that were lousy with the red worm's.
Maybe could grow some plant's to large size in another tank and try them once they have good root structure but I would be nervous about young plant's survival with a dozen loaches,given their natural inquisitive nature,rooting about.
 
I don't think they'll uproot an echinodorus, or crypts, or hydrophila or any bulb plants as long as they establish their roots which doesn't take longer than a week. I've got a common pleco and 13 corys in the same tank and the whole lot don't manage uprooting any plant after the initial stage. Some fragile stem plants that don't have good root system may not fare that well but there are plenty of plants that will.
As for food, when I got my clown loaches I initially fed them predominantly with New Life Spectrum, but I eventually started feeding the tank with lots of algae wafers as well and more food because the clown loaches were stealing all the food. At the moment they are on New Life Spectrum, New Era, Hikari sinking wafers, Tetra algae wafes, Sera algae wafers and some blood worms and mosquito larvae when I think of it.

Edit: I forgot the cucumbers and melon that they love too.
 
Can take a week or two for new plant's to adapt to being submerged as opposed to emmersed ,and they are vulnerable until they put down good root's.(takes longer than a week).
Loaches I have raised, were harmless when small,but at nearly seven inches,,they can and will, uproot stem plant's and all but those that have well established root's.
Tank's I kept them in were fine gravel,sand. would not consider these fish in soil based tank's.
 
When I had Clown Loaches, I had Amazon Swords and Hornwort in their tank. The swords got large and well rooted before the loaches grew big and didn't get damaged. Hornwort doesn't root and is quite tough although it looks delicate.
 
Smallest clown in tank is about4/5" largest is about 7"
This tank has an aqua one aquis 1250lph canister filter and an eheim 750lph canister filter and a 700lph powerhead in tank theres plenty of currents in tank for them to play.

I was also thinking of planting in pots in another
tank then transfering them later, pots and all.
I have anubius on bogwood and a good size anubias growing straight on sand. The smallest clown pushes bogwood round on its own, so now he's becoming a tank buster like the rest of them
This tank is part of my research/experiments for when i can aford to buy and setup their new home 9'x3'x2' which may take some time
 
Big clown said:
Smallest clown in tank is about4/5" largest is about 7"
This tank has an aqua one aquis 1250lph canister filter and an eheim 750lph canister filter and a 700lph powerhead in tank theres plenty of currents in tank for them to play.

I was also thinking of planting in pots in another
tank then transfering them later, pots and all.
I have anubius on bogwood and a good size anubias growing straight on sand. The smallest clown pushes bogwood round on its own, so now he's becoming a tank buster like the rest of them
This tank is part of my research/experiments for when i can aford to buy and setup their new home 9'x3'x2' which may take some time
Click to expand...


Sound's to me a good set up for the loaches.Believe pot's could work well, and I have done this in tank's holding large South American cichlid's to keep the plant's from being uprooted.
I simply sprinkled some Osmocote in the bottom of clay pot (with no hole),Then placed plain potting soil in the pot till near full,and covered the soil with gravel.
Could mix flourite,cat litter,with the soil to help hold nutrient's longer .
Most of the loaches I see for sale in stores,are two to three inch babies ,Those I kept were nearly five inches long when purchased and grew to nearly eight inches in a couple year's.
Was then that they began re-arranging the substrate and uprooting plant's in the process.
 
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