350 gallon planted

[jlgeorge]

First I have to say, my wife absolutely hates this tank planted. Its not that I don't want to clean the algae, trim the plants back, all the other things that go along with it. But I have so much wildlife going on in there I'm afraid to disrupt it. My oldest son Aaron and my two youngest Brandon 9 and Jesse 6 literally spend hours with flashlights looking under rocks, driftwood and plant roots for new fry.
For Saturday night entertainment Aaron (24) and I have been looking for the last hour and a half. We have counted at least 25 new reticulated hillstream loaches. I have had at least 4 spawns now based on the various sizes, found a batch of zebra loach babies tonight as well. Found my yoyo loach and skunk botia that I haven'ts seen in almost a month as well as finally finding where my Hypancistrus sp. (L333) are hiding at. Well all fun has to come to an end, his fiancee just called, so I'm left to search on my own. So the Wife will have to go a bit longer with the tank a mess as I wouldn't want to disturb anything and lose any of these fry. I need to figure out how to get these blasted loaches out of the tank.

John

[fishbit]

Awesome!

[dennysfishroom]

I hope you're keeping track to get the BAP points for them. Good job. Denny

[Jackielee]

To get the fry out try a plastic bottle trap. Loaches are curious enough to get in them. I sink them with a small rock and bait them with something tasty like shrimp or other types of sinking pellets. Sounds like great fun. Good luck trapping and searching. Jack

Oh if you don't know how to make the trap, you just cut the top 1/3 of a plastic bottle off and invert it back into the larger portion of the bottle. Simple and effective. I attach a piece f fishing line to it so I do not have to stick my arm into the tank to retrieve it. JD

[mewickham]

Awesome, John!

[snakeskinner]

sounds awesome, do you have any pics on the site here?

hope you have better luck catching loaches than I have. I made a grave mistake putting a half dozen skunk botia's in a 55 gallon planted tank. My wife nearly divorced me after they began shredding the fins of her rainbows. I tried every method I could to catch the skunk's (including the 2-liter pop bottle traps as suggested). they are waaaaay too fast to catch with a net if you have any obstacles. I finally ended up finding a method that worked by placing one of the traps against the back wall of the tank with the opening facing the front of the tank. Then I would drop some shrimp pellets in front of the trap and then hide below the level of the tank (crouched on the floor) and sit motionless for several minutes. eventually one of the loaches would get relaxed enough to swim in front of the trap for some food (if the other inhabitants hadn't eaten it all yet). once they were settled in front of the trap I would lunge towards the tank scaring them into the trap. I could only get one loach a night that way because the rest would remain hidden after one incident. I would then move the loaches to a bare 10 gallon for storage until I caught them all for sale. I think it took me about 2 weeks to get all 6 out.

good luck! Kyle

[mewickham]

When it comes down to it, nearly all of the various botia-type fish can be real buttheads-- nippy little guys-- except for clown loaches. Skunk botias are one of the worst. I once had a tank in one of my stores where it seemed that everything I put in there ended up with fin rot. One day, the fish would look great. The next, they were shredded. Meds didn't help. I thought some exotic disease must be infesting the tank. One morning, I noticed a tiger botia swimming in the undergravel filter tube. It turned out that there were several in the tank from a previous shipment, all hiding under the UG filter during the day, out of sight!