Flashlight (or torching fish????)

[GaryE]

Flashlighting is an old trick, though the UK members seem to call a flashlight a torch, a very disturbing image to me.

It's simply catching fish when the lights are off and the room is dark. Take a net and a hand held light (strong phone lights are good), and get them when they're sleeping. I just wanted to get some baby black neon tetras into their growout tank, and I figured I'd missed a couple when I netted a bunch yesterday. It spotted two of these small fish hovering over the bottom, motionless and easily scooped the quick little things out. I'll check again later tonight before I clean out the breeding tank tomorrow., since they hide so well when they're awake.

It's an old useful fishcatching trick new aquarists may not have come across.

 

[jaylach]

I don't like it as the method would seem to cause stress. Must be remembered that fish don't have eye lids so the sudden introduction of a bright light is likely to cause a lot of stress.

 

[GaryE]

You have to consider the option of being chased with a net. That also is stressful, and if it goes on too long, exhausting for the fish as well.

This way, you snap on the light, spot the fish, kill the light and net it. We aren't talking prison break searchlights or a chase. The fish is generally hovering, and a very quick catch. The quickness is the key.

With these tiny black neons - they're hard to even spot when lights are on, but when they're hovering in the dark, there's no chase, just a scoop.

 

[Back in the fold]

I’d forgotten about that old trick . Thanks for bringing it up . That trick goes way back .

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I would bet that trick was a lot more popular before the rise of planted tanks. I use a flashlight to spot eggs or wigglers in the caves of my pleco breeding tanks, But the tanks themselves were so full of wood, rocks, slate and caves that they were as hard in which to catch fish as my heavily planted communities.

I f one cannot put a net into most of the places in a tank, then it doesn't matter if one can spot a fish in the dark using a flashlight. I prett much have to break downs most tank completely to catch healthy fish. Sicj fish are often a different stort as they are often so inactive they become easier to nab.

I had a small group of flying foxes in a planted community. I was sold them as SAEs which the were not. I needed to remove them and get the real deal. The last one took me well over a year to catch. It was dumb luck which allowed me to do so, I spotted it hiding one day inside a cave. I was able to get the net over the mouth of the cave and remove it with the fish inside.

What I learned to do in most of my planted tanks was to put plants into pots and to do a lot of plants I could attach to wood and rocks which made it simple to remove them to holding containers filled with water. Once a tank was pretty much empty of everything but fish and water, lowering the water level made is a lot easier to catch fish.

I also learned to divide my pleco tanks in half using a sheet of Poret foam. I facilitated this by having the tank basically divided in half with an air powered Poret cubefilter in the center. That way I could pull it out, use a spatula to part the sand making a two inch wide strip clear of sand down to the bottom glass and then insert the foam. This had two benefits. The first was it made the space where I had to nab the fish 1/2 the size.

It also meant that I could work on the tank 1/2 at a time. If I had to stop for any reason it created a natural break point. I could stop for lunch etc. and return later to catch the fish in the other half. It also meant that I only had to remove 1/2 of the decor at a time. Smaller places to hold it all became possible.

Incidentally, the way that the local fishermen collect altum angels is at night. The altums tend to shelter near the banks among the roots of the land plants which go down int the water. They actually catch the fish one at a time using their hands. This method does much less damage to the fish and makes it a lot easier to catch them.

However, If one has tanks where the amount of plants and/or decor are not so great and there are not nocturnal fish, the flashlight method is quite effective. For me, when possible, catching a cave with a fish inside is a lot easier than chasing it around a tank with a net or two. I is how I catch my large clown loaches when the need to do so arises.

 

[GaryE]

I have friends who have fished for Discus with lights in the flooded forest, snorkeling. You wouldn't get me swimming in a flooded Amazon forest, but it apparently works with them.

In heavily planted tanks where the front is open, you can place a larger long handled net in the tank during the day and leave it leaning underwater. At night, you return, use a flashlight to see what's in it, and scoop.

This method in a totally bare ten gallon saved 8 more fry in total. Because some of the tetras I dabble at breeding in are super light sensitive as eggs and fry, I painted the back, bottom and sides jet black. Even with light, a tiny black neon fry can hide in such a bare tank, just by dropping to the bottom. But they hover to sleep, and a quick flash of light reveals where they are.