Catching Loaches In A Planted Aquarium

[Rattail]

Hi, I have a problem and I need advice please: my 4 skunk loaches are nipping the fins of my glass cats badly. In fact, so badly that I think one is about to die as the top part of the tail has been nipped to the spine. (I am treating the aquarium with medicine to prevent infection).

HOW DO I CATCH THESE BLIGHTERS???

My tank is heavily planted and well established. Very stable.

I have considered removing the plants and draining most of the water,but I am concerned of the nitrites shooting sky high if I were to fiddle with the ecosystem I have taken so much care to set up.

Please advise?

Richard

 

[guppies__everywhere]

have you thought about trying to catch the glass cats instead?

 

[n3ont3tra]

The only thing I can think of is scare them all into one spot, and then use dividers to make the spot smaller then net them.

 

[kev350d]

May sound daft but it works for me, I have a heavily planted 350L so when its time to net a fish i used to get a headache until i started placing a large glass jar (beetroot jar) into the tank then using a net to coax the fish toward it, it would then swim in for safety allowing me to cover the entrance with the net and removing it complete with water, i also found it reduced the chance of damage to scales by the net and kept the fish submerged through the entire process.

Works for me but hell who knows???

 

[Lateral Line]

Skunk Loaches are aggressive out of all proportion to their size.

I usuall place a piece of pipe in the tank. Loaches love pipes. When one or more swim in, fingers over the end and lift it, and the loaches out. Pipe dimensions should be adjusted to fit the loach, large enough for them to feel comfortable sitting in them, not to large to prevent them escaping when lifting.

 

[whip]

This will not help you now, but in the future. I have a small plastic cup that I use to thaw frozen food in. I mix the food with some water, and let it sit for a few minutes. Once the food is warm, I gently sink the cup below the water level. My clown loachs, RTBS, and some of the tetras(The hard one's to catch) will swim right into the cup. Just lift the cup with the fish, and place him in the new tank. It's easy and stress free for the kepper and the fish.

 

[krishanu]

i do something quite similar to kev...except i chase my fish into the submerged jar . it is actually quite effective. for benthic fish like loaches i think it should work even better. i had to catch this smartass dwarf cichlid that had ripped apart this really nice guppy of mine. it was so smart that the moment i put a net in the water it realised that i was out to catch it and it hid amongst the vegetation at the back of the tank near the filter tubes!

 

[Rattail]

Well, I managed to catch all four the skunk loaches. Eventually.

As you know, I have a HEAVILY planted aquarium, which I did not want to break down.

As a starting point, I starved the inhabitants, and then tried various methods of catching the skunks.


I tried the inverted-bottle-neck method, and also tried putting a large 5L water bottle in the aquarium (both with food in of course!), but only caught kuhli and java loaches (Remember this for one day….). I even managed to catch the overweight, extremely crafty, Stoffel (False Siamensis). All but the skunk loaches.

I even made a trap using a net and a piece of string – this obviously did not work, but I was desperate by that time!

My LFS suggested I try using a snail trap. I must confess that I was skeptical, but realized that I had nothing to lose, so I bought it.

This is how it works: there are spacers that one can either leave in or out, which is determined by the size of whatever it is you wish to catch. (I left every second one out). Then you put food inside the red bait holder and wait.

When the fish swims in to get the food, he swims past the black, one-way levers, can’t swim out again, and he’s caught. This does not work on all fish though as the kuhli and java loaches were going back and forth as though these were swinging doors.

Sitting fishing for anything between 1 and 5 hours at a time, I eventually caught the skunk loaches. I managed to catch loach 1 after 2 hours on the first day. I set up a semi-quarantine tank in a 25L bucket with heater and power head. Loach 2 took a bit longer, and I caught him on day 4. On the fifth day, I caught the 3rd one, and saw that one had died. Must’ve been the stress.

The weekend saw a friend and I fishing for about 5 hours – to no avail.

In the meantime, I was dreaming of catching skunk loaches, tanks bursting, etc. It was very frustrating.

I decided to close all but one of the slots on the one side of the trap so as to limit the places for the last skunk to escape from and on day 7, #4 actually went into the trap. However, as I lifted it out, she escaped (definitely a female) as she was thinner than the other 3 had been.

On day 8, I asked God to help. (Should’ve done this long ago!) I got a brainwave and closed all gaps on the trap except one. Within ½ hour, she had gone in, and I quickly whipped the trap out. VIOLA! All 4 caught. That night I slept peacefully, and I don’t HAVE TO rescape.


And that, my fiends, is how you catch a skunk loach! B)

NOTE: my aquarium became rather polluted after this (all the excessive food that was used as bait), which lead to an outbreak of cyanobacteria (blue-green aglae). I have sucessfully managed to eradicate this with erythromycin - obtained from my local vet. Now I am doing loads of water changes to get the water quality back to where it was befofe the skunks came....

 

[Henk Hugo]

Good day Richard,

Once again, as we all told you on the South African forums the cyanobacteria outbreak was not due to the excess food in the tank as your plants would have absorbed it but due to an imbalance in the PO4 and NO3 in the tank. You can go read the Barr report for more information on that.