DIY fish trap

[aruns]

I ran into a situation where I had to catch my larger yellow and mimic tangs in my 150G when they started constantly harrassing a newly introduced smaller purple tang

I balked at those fancy 50-80$ fish traps and decided to look up DIY.

Certainly not my original idea but this worked beautifully - took me two days to catch them, tempting them with nori.

$6 Petco small size pet keeper
Some fishing line to control trap door
Frag plug + nori + rubber band + fishing line to dangle the nori and be able to swing it to where I want
Some sort of aquarium magnet to secure the pet keeper, I used my tunze magnetic scraper
Turkey baster to inject food
Drill hole on side of pet keeper to inject food via baster

What I observed
- wrasses were the smartest. 2 of my fairy wrasses immediately figured out how to go in and get the food. My yellow Coris and melanarus were super cautious and never ventured near the trap
- my clowns kept pecking at the sides and never figured out how to get to the food, lol.
- my tangs were somewhere in the middle. On 2nd day they tried but couldn't figure out how to get the food. At this point I dangled the nori near the mouth of the trap and let them eat for a day. Then next day, did the same but when they started eating swung the nori into the trap and they both followed inside. Super stoked when it worked :)

 

[Fishy212]

Nice! Awesome write up.. it’s crazy to think about how some species of fish are so intelligent. I use a long acrylic feeding tube and my clown always attacks the tube. Haha makes me laugh.

 

[aruns]

Thanks :). Nevertheless, they all do have interesting personalities.

 

[danieyella]

Thank you for this, did this today and finally caught my coral nipping jerk!