Hard-to-catch Fish

[insecurity]

Hey. I have my 20gallon all stocked up with my dwarf puffers but I'm having a problem- the guppy. I want to get him out of there, as I know the DPs and the guppy do not mix and that with my 4 DPs, that the tank is at its capacity.

The problem is, I can't seem to catch the guppy. Any time I so much as wave my hand in front of the tank, he hides in some well established plants that I don't want to rip out just to get him.

I tried using food to lure him to the front, but even with the food he continues to dart back to the places where I can't get my net.

Any tips?

 

[starlight682]

what i had to do with my danios is go buy a big tank net and then use the small one to basically chase them into the big one caught all 6 of my danio's in less than 2 mins that way
way less stressful to the fish that way too

 

[Ziggs180]

Try using something else to scare the fish into the net. I use tongs that i use to root plants into the substrate, in order to guide fish into a net.

 

[Lt.]

Have you looked into the funny red supposedly "Infrared" ffish nets? I don't have one, but whenever I watch my LFS's employees try to catch fish, those always seem to do better than conventional green or blue nets. And +1 to chasing or scaring fish in a bigger net using a smaller net (or other object).

 

[Lardeelion]

This happened to me the other day with a guppy. Eventually I gave up and came back the next day and was able to use two nets to herd her. It sucked.

 

[Rivercats]

In the big tank there is only two ways for me to catch fish. First I do the "add food and when it comes up to eat nab it" but you better be fast. If that fails I wait till night get a flashlight and net the fish when it's sleeping, barring it's not in a ton of plants.

 

[calfishguy]

In the big tank there is only two ways for me to catch fish. First I do the "add food and when it comes up to eat nab it" but you better be fast. If that fails I wait till night get a flashlight and net the fish when it's sleeping, barring it's not in a ton of plants.

The night method is what I used to get my black skirts out of my 55.

 

[H2OJO]

Drain the water down which will help you move the net a lot quicker and slow the fish down.

Obviously keep your water and then put the water back in.

Trying to catch a flying fox is the hardest, this is what I ended up doing!

 

[Fishy Smell]

'You're gonna need a bigger net.'

 

[james77]

What I did was put my net in the water when I fed the fish. They got so use to the net being there it didn't bother them no more. I caught 8 zebra danios this way in my 55 gallon. Took about a week to get them use to it.