crammed under a rock

I inadvertently created the most hilarious situation in my fish tank last night. I have been trying to sink foods to get extra to the kuhli loaches, Albert still looks too thin. An hour after dark the blue "moonlights" come on, I can see into the tank but supposedly the fishes can't see. Approaching quietly, all looks still- the barbs are resting near the substrate, drifting quietly. Trying not to alert the cherry barbs, I dropped a shrimp pellet in the back of the tank, through a gap in the skirt that admits the airline. Didn't even lift the lid. It landed near a black kuhli loach and immediately he started zinging around seeking the food. When he found it he began shoving it alongside the tank wall. A second kuhli joined him, a few barbs of course scented it and came over too, but then the first kuhli pushed the food pellet into the front corner and it went under the flat rock that was a little kuhli cave. And then all four black kuhlis were trying to jam their bodies under that rock.

Mostly succeeding. They looked so squished.

Tails in the air at right angles to the glass, heads and whiskery barbels poking around then disappearing into the crush again.

The barbs kept trying, very determined, thrashing their tails into a blur, shoving their noses at all the gaps but they just didn't fit. I could see their mouths questing, questing against the sides of the kuhli bodies in the way.

At one point all four black loaches were under that rock, looked so tight they couldn't even move, I was afraid some of them would suffocate or scrape themselves, but every now and then one would shove a new way out through the gravel, or wiggle backwards.

The shy striped loaches stayed back at first, but eventually Snakey Fish came in and got under there too,

and then Albert the skinniest one- you can see his narrow belly in a curve here on the right under a black loach, how much smaller it is.

I couldn't stop laughing at their desperate antics to reach the food. Figured out how to get my camera setting to capture some photos in the dark, but of course it was all blue under the "moonlight" that's hard for the eye to interpret so I made these pictures monotone to show.

Really must fashion some kind of kuhli enclosure only they can enter, to target feeding. I have a plan involving the bottom of a water bottle... I'm glad that the smaller, striped guys got under there and hopefully got their share this time.

~ I checked on them an hour and a half later, just to reassure myself no-one had gotten stuck under the rock. Only one black kuhli remained poking around under there, with lots of room to maneuver now. I could tell they really stuffed themselves, because this morning when I dropped in fish food for the barbs, the kuhlis did not start scrambling around as usual. Just casually poked about, in no hurry at all to find errant flakes.