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How to catch a firefish. A tutorial :)


Sherita

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I needed to move the fish out of my 30g small world tank, and into qt. I had no trouble catching the Naoko wrasse, the Red Parrot Wrasse, or the tailspot blenny. Getting the two barnacle blennies out tried my patience a good bit, but mainly because I did not want to hurt them, so I wasn't being real aggressive in my efforts.

That left.............the fire fish. The firefish that hid as soon as I started catching fish. I would see glimpses of him, then *poof*, he would vanish. I slowly blocked off his hidey holes, one by one. I was sure I would soon get him. Then, he was just gone.I looked everywhere. On the floor? Nope. In the overflow? Nope. In the sump? In the closed loop? Nope. He. Was. Gone. Gone. Gone.

I gave up and decided to drain the tank, certain that he would pop out of a hole as soon as the water level dropped, Well, he didn't. So, I took the rock out and inspected it. No fish. WTH?!

So, I put the rock into the qt tank so I could. rescape the tank today (I didn't like the way it looked). This morning, I started to rescape. As I picked the last rock out of the qt......ZOOOOMMMM. Firefish shot across the qt tank.

So, in order to catch a firefish: you must drain the tank, remove the rock, make a HUGE mess. And you will find him the next morning.

Not my greatest moment. I was outsmarted by a 2" fish. doh.gif

At least he is in the qt tank. Which is where I wanted him to be all along.rock.gif

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ive done a firefish a few times with a bottle trap.

I tried various traps, nets, blocking off parts of the tank, cussing, and threatening. This fish was the absolute worst I have ever seen to try to catch. I'm tempted to get rid of him, just so I will never have to try to catch him again.

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lol at cussing and threatening. next time be sure to speak more quickly because sound slows down in water.

for the record "i glue small animals to rocks" still gives me a chuckle whenever i see it.

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Before I moved to Texas I had firefish living in my 200g reef. To catch them when I broke it down I had to do the same thing. I had tried a fish trap and a bottle trap and neither worked. I eventually took the rock out of the tank and put it into a spare 55g.

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Interesting topic. Shane at Fishy Business is amazing at catching fish. He never uses a net, and only uses a plastic box to catch fish. He believes nets create too much trauma for the fish.

He has a really large vat in the back of his shop where he keeps some fish which folks bring back and no one wants.

He told me a story about a guy who bet him he couldn't catch the yellowtail damsel using his technique in the back vat in x amount of minutes (I forget what x was). He said he was able to catch the damsel in only a couple of minutes. He's been doing it for a long time, but if you ever watch him, you can see he knows what he's doing.

Since then, I've also been trying to catch my fish with a platstic hang on box, and it does seem to be a lot less stress on the fish. For instance, when I clean my tank, I remove the drain PVC elbow with strainer, and turn up the powerhead. Because the bulkhead is wide open when the elbow is removed, I remove my clown first. She's gotten used to the quick swim into the box, then hanging out there until the cleanup is complete.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

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