rm
Passport
- Family
- Loaches and Botia
- Grows to
- 16 cm (6.3")
- Lives
- 10–15 years
- Temperament
- Semi aggressive
- Care
- Intermediate
- Swims
- On the bottom
- Keep
- In a group of 5 or more
- Water
- 19–27.5 °C (66–82 °F)
India
Care requirements
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On record for Yoyo Loach: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 151 L / 40.0 US gal
- pH 6–7.5
- Hardness 2–12 dGH
- Diet carnivore
- Tank length 120 cm minimum
Keeping notes
Nips trailing fins and can bully much smaller fish just by being busy. Eats snails, so any snail in the tank is on the menu.
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Yoyo loaches are named for their markings, and once someone points it out you can't unsee it — the dark bands on a young fish spell out something very like "YOYO" along the flank. The pattern breaks up into a reticulated net as they mature.
They're among the most personable loaches in the trade. A settled group is busy, inquisitive and completely unbothered by being watched, and they'll come to the front of the tank when you approach it.
They also grow bigger and behave more assertively than people expect. A mature yoyo is a substantial fish with a strong personality, and in a small tank or a small group that personality turns into bullying.
Tank setup
Give your yoyos a group and give them floor space. They establish a hierarchy among themselves and work it out through constant chasing that looks alarming and does no harm; kept in ones and twos they redirect it at your other fish.
Provide caves and gaps everywhere. Rocks stacked into crevices, wood with hollows, lengths of pipe — they'll each claim somewhere and retreat to it, and a tank with too few hiding places produces genuine fighting.
Floor it with sand. They dig, they sift substrate through their gills, and they push their barbels into it constantly. Sharp gravel damages both.
Expect them to rearrange things. Anything not anchored will be moved.
Keep the light moderate and give them shade from wood and hardy plants.
Feeding
Yoyo loaches eat almost anything and eat it fast. Sinking pellets and wafers as a base, with frozen bloodworm, brine shrimp and daphnia regularly.
They're serious snail hunters. A group will find and eat every snail in a tank, including ones wedged into places you'd have thought unreachable, which makes them excellent pest control and a disaster for a nerite collection.
Feed them enough. A hungry yoyo is a pushy one, and most complaints about their temperament come from underfed fish.
Avoid: floating foods as the mainstay. They feed on and near the bottom and will struggle to compete at the surface.
Filtration and flow
Filter well and give them moderate to strong flow. They come from flowing rivers and streams across South Asia and they're comfortable in a current.
Keep nitrate low with regular changes. Barbel erosion is the visible cost of a neglected tank and it happens to loaches before it happens to anything else.
Oxygenation matters more than for a typical community fish. They're active and they use it.
With plants
Yoyos don't eat plants and will absolutely uproot them. Anything newly planted in sand gets excavated within days.
Attach what you can to hardscape. Java fern, anubias and moss tied to wood are entirely safe and give the shade the fish appreciate.
If you want rooted plants, let them establish in a separate tank first and plant them deep. Established root systems usually survive.
Health
Ich is the usual complaint. Pick something that says what it does about loaches and use it as directed rather than improvising a gentler course of your own, since a dose too small to finish the job only draws the problem out.
Handle them in a container, never a net. The erectile spine below each eye catches in mesh and the fish injures itself trying to free it — it can also give you a sharp jab.
Watch for a fish permanently excluded from the group's hiding places. That's a hierarchy problem, and the answer is more cover or more loaches rather than fewer.
Breeding
Home breeding is very rare and essentially unpredictable. Commercial stock is produced with hormone induction.
The wild trigger is seasonal: they migrate to spawn as the monsoon changes flow, depth and water chemistry, and a tank cannot easily reproduce that combination.
Occasional accidental spawnings turn up in large, mature, well-flowed tanks after big cool water changes. The eggs would need moving to have any chance, since the adults eat them.
Tank mates
Avoid14
- Least Killifish Yoyo Loach grows to 16 cm against Least Killifish at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Scarlet Badis Yoyo Loach grows to 16 cm against Scarlet Badis at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Assassin Snail Yoyo Loach is not safe with Assassin Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
- Bladder Snail Yoyo Loach is not safe with Bladder Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
- Common Goldfish Yoyo Loach is not safe with Common Goldfish: common goldfish and loaches and botia are a bad pairing.
Only with care31
- Kribensis Yoyo Loach is noticeably larger than Kribensis and may bully it or outcompete it at feeding time.
- Panda Garra Yoyo Loach is semi-aggressive and Panda Garra is peaceful.
- Amano Shrimp Yoyo Loach is a risk to Amano Shrimp: loaches and botia and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
- Bamboo Shrimp Yoyo Loach is a risk to Bamboo Shrimp: loaches and botia and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
- Blue Bolt Shrimp Yoyo Loach is a risk to Blue Bolt Shrimp: loaches and botia and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 60 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 3 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.