Catching Kuhli Loaches

[DrizzleWizzle]

Kuhli Loaches are a little obnoxious. (I should know; I just spent most of my night attempting to catch a trio of from one of my tanks.) Since I was rather successful, I thought I'd share my methods, for the benefit of future loach-catchers.

Kuhli's are hard enough to get out of the bare tanks at the LFS, let alone a nicely planted tank. You'll never catch them by waving your net around in the water. Another tactic is clearly necessary.

My first thought was to use the plastic pop-bottle fish trap that people often use to catch loaches. I built one and added some shrimp tablets. My Kuhli's weren't interested, but I did manage to catch every one of my six cories. Doink.

My next idea was to make the food more available. I placed shrimp pellets in my fish net, and buried the tip of the net under my gravel. When a hungry loach wandered in, I quickly raised the net to the surface. After about an hour, I caught one Kuhli this way. (You also get a fair amount of gravel, and any other fish who are eating at the same time.) This method was reasonably effective, but time consuming, and demands quite a bit of attention. Far from perfect.

My final -- and most effective -- tactic was to ambush the Kuhlis at night. Once the sun set, I turned off all my room lights, turned off my tank lights, and waited for about an hour, so that the nocturnal fish could wake up. I removed my lights and my glass top, to make net movement easier. I turned on my flashlight, and went searching for Kuhlis.

Once the light hit a loach, it would begin to swim away. I used the light to chase the Kuhli's to the aquarium glass, where they would swim up and down and along the glass. While they did this, I moved my net so that it was flush against the glass and below the loach, with the opening pointed upward. When the frantic loach would swim above the net, a quick upward scoop would catch it. I managed to get the last two loaches out of my tank in a little under 10 minutes using this method.

Good luck loach-keepers, and happy Kuhli hunting!

-Drew

[Bubble_B0y]

I don't have a trick -
But I just use a VERY VERY BIG net

[Zagz]

I always try to catch fish whenever possible when they wake up, they are lethargic and much slower. Loaches in general are faster and hard to catch IMO.

[GlitcH]

The bottle fish trap works for me just fine.........the trick is to punch small holes in it to let some water flow through it, along with the sent of the food and leave it overnight.

Next morning......you've got a bottle of kuhliis.

[Burks]

When I transferred my two Kuhli's I had to use two nets. Basically chased them with one net into the other.