DrizzleWizzle
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2006
- Messages
- 11
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
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
