Hello peeps,
A while back we had a discussion as to the best way to catch a chinese algae eater you wanted to take back to the LFS before it turned into a monster. (See here for that post) Anyway for anyone else who bought one or more of these when you were new to the hobby without being told how big and aggressive they get, I thought you might like to hear my approach to catching them - slippery little suckers that they are! So here you go:
1. Get yourself a chunk of cucumber, scoop the seeds out, trim some of the skin, wash it etc.
2. Put the cucumber inside the net you want to use for catching your fishies.
3. Rest the net inside of the tank so the handle is pointing upwards and the net is opening towards the front of the tank, and the cucumber is resting ever so tantalisingly inside the net.
4. Wait FOREVER until you have your CAE munching away happily on the cucumber.
5. Quickly lift up the net, hopefully with the cucumber and CAE still inside, and pop him in a ready and waiting bag with tank water in.
This requires a fair bit of patience but eventually it worked a treat and best of all I didn't have to stress out my other fishies by chasing the CAEs round the tank for hours with the net! Although unsurprisingly they're all a bit wary of cucumber now!
HTH
A while back we had a discussion as to the best way to catch a chinese algae eater you wanted to take back to the LFS before it turned into a monster. (See here for that post) Anyway for anyone else who bought one or more of these when you were new to the hobby without being told how big and aggressive they get, I thought you might like to hear my approach to catching them - slippery little suckers that they are! So here you go:
1. Get yourself a chunk of cucumber, scoop the seeds out, trim some of the skin, wash it etc.
2. Put the cucumber inside the net you want to use for catching your fishies.
3. Rest the net inside of the tank so the handle is pointing upwards and the net is opening towards the front of the tank, and the cucumber is resting ever so tantalisingly inside the net.
4. Wait FOREVER until you have your CAE munching away happily on the cucumber.
5. Quickly lift up the net, hopefully with the cucumber and CAE still inside, and pop him in a ready and waiting bag with tank water in.
This requires a fair bit of patience but eventually it worked a treat and best of all I didn't have to stress out my other fishies by chasing the CAEs round the tank for hours with the net! Although unsurprisingly they're all a bit wary of cucumber now!
HTH
