Gill Passman wrote: in answer to a question about clown loaches diappearing:
... I rarely see one of
my latest batch of 3 in QT but he is in there for sure.....plus someone
posted a few months ago about suddenly finding a very large, fat Clown
Loach they thought had died months before...I've lost CLs for days on
end and they suddenly turn up as if nothing has happened...

The only way you will know for sure is with a torch under the tank and
stripping out every single nook and cranny in your tank that he might be
hiding in/under....

Good luck...and I hope it turns out the best for you....and get hunting....

Gill

My 3 clown loaches always show up at meal times, but they like to hide
too. Often they're behind pieces of slate I've leaned agains the
aquarium back.

In my early aquarium keeping days I had a kuhli loach in a planted
aquarium with sand substrate. We rarely saw the kuhli loach, and several
times I was convinced that it had died. Actually, it would bury itself
in the sand so we couldn't see it. Once we figured that out, we could
sometimes find the kuhli loach's little face poking up out of the sand.