Botia almorhae, a Pakistani loach

Botia almorhæ (B. lohachata) (Yo-Yo Loach). This Botia comes from Pakistan (and so it's sometimes called the "Pakistani Loach") and from India, where it inhabits still and slow-running waters all through the vast Ganges system. Almora, where it was first collected, is a market town and district in the Siwalik Hills, forested foothills of the Himalayas in the northern part of Uttar Pradesh. As they mature, individuals migrate upstream as far as Nepal. Is captivity frustrating this urge and putting aquarium spawning of these fish out of reach?  These loaches are usually credited with a maximum length of about 10cm in aquaria, but I have seen wild-caught adults imported to New York that were noticeably longer than that. I think the first importations to the US were in the mid 1990s.
 
This species is less nocturnal than most Botia, about as bold as B. macrantha, and it likewise thrives best in a small shoal, where it forms a pecking order as Clown Loaches and Blue Loaches do. But provide Yo-Yo Loaches with enough coconut shells so they can nip from one to another, like the streaker at the 1974 Oscars. If you're a Yo-Yo Loach, it's much more interesting to evict a fellow loach from a coconut shell than to occupy an empty one.
 
The Y-shaped arches are most clearly-defined on younger fish; my inherited loner was definitely a New York Loach, with a pattern that distinctly read "Oy-oy!" He learned that waggling fingers in front of the glass meant that blackworms were on the way, as soon as he danced on his tail. I say "his" because I hear that a mature female has a longer snout.
 
An American "Yoyo Loach" is an English "Reticulated Loach" and a German Netzschmerle. The mistaken name Botia lohachata that we first had for these fish arose when a researcher in 1912 took up a juvenile B. almorhæ, a fish that had first been described in 1831, and described it as a new species. For a long time we knew it under its pseudonym, and you'll still see it for sale at your LFS as "lohachata," if it's being given a scientific name at all. The correct, original name seems to have stuck, ever since it was listed as B. almorhæ by A.G.K. Menon, The Fauna of India and the Adjacent Countries: Pisces, vol IV, part 2, in the Zoological Survey of India, Calcutta 1992— a volume, doubtless, on every shelf.
 
Links. There's a description of  the Yo-yo Loach at Loaches on-Line.
Botia almorhae at FishBase. Yo-yo Loach at Wikipedia.