cant catch darn damsel
 

Hello to anyone who reads .... i have been trying to catch two yellow tail damsels in my 140 ...dam things are smarter then they look....i have sat there with a net for an hour straight at one point and they wont even come out of the rock work i put a 2 liter bottle trap in for two days and still no go they are a breeding pair so i want to put them in there own tank and maybe get some small frys and they wont leave any one else in the tank alone.....any help would be great thanks.......

You need a trap for sure. The one I used to catch a similar fish you baited with some food tied to fish line, when it was pulled on it would pull the pin for the door and let it drop, worked like a charm. It was small enough that the fish wasnt scared to go into it.

I dont think you will get him with rock etc in your tank, I didnt stand a chance.

I had a ytd in my 72.
He was a terror to everyone else in the tank.
These fish are smart and if the even see a shadow of a net, they're hiding.
I tried everything to get them and in the end, had to take all the rockwork out to do it.

Good luck

Try the trap, but if the damsels are food-crazy (which they are!) then a good old hook and line will probably work, just use a small hook and bend the barbs down so you can take it out of it's mouth. :D

A trap will probably not work for these fish.
they are in my experience, very spatially aware and will not trust a bottle ( i tried a few different variations) but the hook and line I never tried...

I could see that working with this fish.

Start feeding out of a net, the rest is pretty easy

tried that too.
everyone BUT my damsel fell for it, as they did the bottle trap.

awesome i will try the good old hook line and sinker then lol....never in a million years would i have thought of that... even though i love to go fishing every now and again... thanks all

I caught mine with a small barbless hook baited with mysis......I have another to catch I should video it :mrgreen:

Hi try this out,
 

I had to catch two in my tank and I put a mirror in the front and when they where busy attacking the 'intruders' snip/snap in under a minute they were netted.

I'll post some videos of the "fishing" technique when I get time lol. I fished a couple striped cardinalfish out that way. They evaded every other method of capture I could come up with, but the hook and line with some PE mysis on the end took less than 2 minutes for the three fish. Just don't catch the ones you want to stay in the tank!