Live rock question

[atexada]

I've tried every trick on this forum to catch my damsel and purple dottyback and am going to have to resort to taking out all the live rock. Two questions: do I have to put the rock in tank water for the short time it will take me to catch the fish, or can I just lay it in a styrofoam box with no water, and will moving it cause anything to spike, such as ammonia or nitrites?

Thanks again!!

 

[Bifferwine]

You should try to keep the rock submerged. It will help you catch the fish to remove water from the tank too, so you can fill the box up with water from the tank, add the rock to the box, then go after the fish. The less water they have to swim around in, the easier they'll be to catch.

I'd suggest doing a water change afterwards, as anytime you move the rock around it's likely that you are going to release a lot of crap into the water, which can spike ammonia and nitrites. Keep an eye on your parameters for the next couple of days, too.

Some people move rock and sand from tank to tank and never see anything spike though, but it's better to have new water ready just in case.

Good luck catching the fish! Those are two really tough fish to outsmart.

 

[acerhigh]

have you tried just draining the water from your tank? if you get the water down to where there is only an inch or two in the bottom a lot of times you can catch stubborn fish easily, then just put the water back in.... rock and coral are often exposed for long periods of time during tides and such... it shouldn't hurt anything in the tank..

 

[cthegame]

if you have a pieces of plexi sheet you can set them up all over the tank to confuse the fish which makes catching it easier. This worked really well for me the first few times but after a while my fish figured me out and would just go hide in the rocks and not show themselves.

Other method is to fish them out with a hook with all the lights off and a net ready to catch him off guard when he goes for the food.

 

[ndepratt]

Your rock will be fine out of the water for a few minutes. But that's a lot of work.... have you tried the 2 liter bottle traps? friend of mine caught a super fast lunar wrasse in his 90g with it, and it only took a couple minutes.

 

[sen5241b]

Keep the LR wet! Keep it submerged in 5G plastic buckets form Home Depot or splash it with water every 2 or 3 minutes. If the LR dries out even a little you will get a die off and a resulting cycle.

The fish bottle trap did not work for my Dottyback. He wriggle out in 10 seconds. When I finally took out all the LR he was gone! He hid in a hole in the rock when I moved it to the bucket!

 

[yote]

Another option is cherry bombs,but that can messy pretty quick.