Acantopsis is a genus of horseface loaches (family Cobitidae) from Southeast Asian rivers and streams, recorded in the atlas from Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar. Their common name comes from an elongated, pointed snout and a small, low-set, protrusible mouth suited to sifting sand — the genus is built for burrowing, with a slender body that vanishes into soft substrate in an instant when startled, leaving little more than the eyes exposed. The atlas covers 8 species, from about 3–12 in, and every species listed here shares the horseface-loach common name.
In the aquarium, Acantopsis are kept specifically for that sand-sifting behavior — they need a soft, fine substrate, since coarse gravel can injure the sensitive barbels and snout, and do best kept in a group over a bare-bottom or planted setup with plenty of open sand to work. They are peaceful, mostly nocturnal scavengers and micro-predators, sifting sand for small invertebrates and leftover food rather than competing openly in the water column. Conservation data remain thin for much of the genus — the atlas tally runs four Not Evaluated, two Data Deficient, one Near Threatened and one Vulnerable — meaning most Acantopsis species have not yet had their wild status formally resolved.