The dwarf loach, ladderback loach, pygmy loach, chain loach or chain botia, Yasuhikotakia sidthimunki (formerly Botia sidthimunki), is a popular freshwater

Freshwater

Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...

 tropical fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 in aquarium

Aquarium

An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...

s belonging to the Cobitidae family.

Size and habitat

The dwarf loach can grow up to 5 cm (2 in) in length. It prefers water with temperature 25 - 30 °C (77 to 86 °F), pH

PH

In chemistry, pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Pure water is said to be neutral, with a pH close to 7.0 at . Solutions with a pH less than 7 are said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic or alkaline...

 6.5 to 6.9 dGH

DGH

Degrees of general hardness is a unit of water hardness, specifically of general hardness.General hardness is a measure of the concentration of metal divalent ions such as calcium and magnesium per volume of water...

 to 8.0. It is omnivorous, with a diet including live crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s, insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s, snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

s, etc.

The dwarf loach is found in the Mae Klong

Mae Klong

The Mae Klong is a river in western Thailand. The river begins at the confluence of the Khwae Noi or Khwae Sai Yok and the Khwae Yai River or Khwae Si Sawat in Kanchanaburi, pass Ratchaburi Province and empties into the Gulf of Thailand in Samut Songkhram....

 River and the Khwae Noi River in western Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

. This species is endangered and is a protected species in Thailand. It was thought to be extinct in the wild until recently rediscovered in Sangkhla Buri

Amphoe Sangkhla Buri

Sangkhla Buri is a district in the Kanchanaburi Province in western Thailand.-Geography:Sangkhla Buri is located in the far west of the province, at the boundary to Myanmar. The Three Pagodas Pass is the border crossing station to Myanmar...

. While they disappeared from the wild, it remained in the aquarium trade because of artificial breeding by private fish farms for over 3 decades.

The fish was discovered by Somphong Lekaree (สมพงษ์ เล็กอารีย์) and Damri Sukaram (ดำริ สุขอร่าม) in 1959. Lekaree was an aquarium fish exporter while Sukaram was a fisherman for aquarium trade.

The binomial name of this fish is in honor of Aree Sidthimunk , a researcher at Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture.

Related species

The dwarf loach closely resembles Yasuhikotakia nigrolineata, another Thai protected species, especially when the fish is fully grown. The difference is easily seen when the fish is still small. Juveniles of Y. sidthimunki have dotted patterns while Y. nigrolineata have horizontal lines on them. Furthermore the chain pattern of Y. sidthimunki develops in fish at a smaller size.