Unethical?

[mandinga]

If you fish for him go with something in the size 18-22 range. I've caught large trout on this size and they have massive mouths compared to a Kole tang

 

[Reef Pets]

Me and my friend used a barbless hook and caught a big foxface out of his tank. Literally caught him in less than a minute! Fish was just fine. :)

I agree with this. I've done it a couple times with great success. Just grind or cut the barb off a tiny fishing hook with some fishing line and you will catch him without any harm to the fish.

 

[mcarroll]

And if you found yourself unable to grind the barb off, it's infinitesimally small....I've never had any major damage from it. I would use the hook anyway. (It shouldn't be hard to grind off if you're slightly committed though.)

-Matt

 

[stunreefer Verified Sponsor]

Catching fish is incredibly easy with only an inch or two of water in the tank, believe it or not ;)

Pump the water out into reservoirs, catch the fish, re-fill. You won't have to move any rocks, disturb any animals in the tank, and any corals (if you have them) will be fine during a short 'low-tide' period.

The only complaint I've ever heard with this method is not having large enough reservoirs to hold your water, which in your case being 400 gallons would obviously require one huge reservoir or several smaller one's. This is easily and affordably overcome if you don't have the reservoirs on hand: pick up a few Brute cans from Lowe's or HD and return them when you're done.

 

[gfox]

Fish on!!

 

[general0]

I had a huge 6" One Spot Foxface that went through a huge collection of my zoas. I tried everything, catch boxes, fishing it out, and netting it several times but the only thing I was able to do besides tearing down my 165g tank was waiting till lights were out and spear it. I made the spear out of a old fishing rod tip and a straightened out fish hook with the barb glued into the end of the rod. it's actually turned out to be a really good tool for other uses in my tank since this!

I knew where it slept in the tank at night so it was an easy job of finding it and once I speared it near the tail I took the fish out the tank and cut the barbed end off and put it in a QT tank for monitoring it and to see if it would make it. It healed up just fine and I was able to pass it on to another reefer two weeks later.

If your careful with where you spear it the fish could actually live through this and you wouldn't have to tear your tank down!