Wood Catfish become one with the wood.
I have an aquarium with various Tatia wood catfish and a species of wood catfish that is similar but not quite a tatia. This species is called the Otorongo wood catfish, and both of mine hide under a large piece of wood all day everyday.
Today, I was cleaning my aquarium and decided to take a look under the wood as I haven’t seen them in a few months. Once I flipped over the wood inside of the tank, I found an interesting situation… both of them were stuck inside the wood with only the head of one and the eye of the other being visible. As it turns out, my centerpiece wood is hollow on the inside with two little holes that connect it to the outside. One hole was clearly big enough to allow these little buggers to enter and get stuck inside of it. After a few minutes of trying to get one to budge, I realized they were stuck inside the wood and unable to escape.
I proceeded to spend the next hour and a half whittling the wood around the head of the bigger wood cat to make to opening bigger so I could get both of them out.
After using coral cutters and a screw driver, I was able to free the Otorongo wood cats at last and I hope this doesn’t happen again.
