Breeding Zebra Loach (Botia Striata) In The Aquarium

Location

This fish lives in mountain streams with clear, clean, and shallow water. These streams are going through woods in Pakistan, north and south India. This is the endangered species.

Body description

This fish has fusiform body and four pairs of barbels on the chin. All body (the eyes too) is covered in transverse, narrow bands. The bands create a colorful pattern with 7 to 9 stripes in colors: black, gray, green, blue, and one brown-gold. The pattern repeats from the head to the tail. These pattern can look different on each fish. You can often find hybrids which have patterns looking like a mosaic. Zebra loach has clear fins with a dark bands and it's mouth is red-orange. The sexual dimorphism of the fish is hard to tell. Females are thicker than males when they are sexually matured.

Temperament and behaviour

This species is peaceful, active, a bit shy, and inquisitive. It lives in groups – it prefers to swim in shoal of minimum 5 fish. In group it forms a social hierarchy – the most colorful fish becomes the leader. Very often the leader is a female. In the group the young and smaller fish often swims like a shadow of the older and bigger fish and they follow their every move. Too small shoal will lead to fish becoming aggressive to other demersal fish. These fish often rests pressed upright in a slots or lying on the substrate. They also rummage in substrate, nibble plants with soft leaves and eat small snails. They shouldn’t be kept with smaller fish, fish with long and flowing fins and fish which swim too slow. You can keep them with cyprynidae fish of the genus: Barillius, Luciosioma, Balantocheilos or other botias, or Siamese Algae Eater, or Labeo Bicolor. This species is often infected by flagellates of the genus Spironucleas (sick fish can be recognized by the skinny look of the body), so you have to quarantine the fish after purchase. This fish occasionally fed on live food.

Aquarium decoration

The aquarium should have soft and fine substrate (sand or gravel), many places to hide among roots, rocks, pots etc. , all the decorative elements should have rounded, soft edges. It is necessary to cover the tank (fish likes to jump out of the aquarium), clear and oxygen-rich water, and gentle water flow. The partial water changes (about 50% once a week) and substrate cleaning should be made systematically. If you want to put some plants in the aquarium, you ca use java moss, java fern (Microsorum pteropus) or anubias. This fish mostly swims at the bottom water level.

Breeding

This is an oviparous species. We don’t have any information about breeding these fish in aquarium. Fish which are available for sale come from special farms where they are bred with use of hormones.