.....is that they HIDE! :arg I sold the 75 gallon aquarium setup and the person who bought it is coming to pick it all up tomorrow morning. I have spent the morning moving fish to a temporary home (most of them are going to the tank at the kids' school) and draining/cleaning the 75. The person who bought the tank did decide they wanted the two bristlenose plecos so I have to get them into a container to hold until she comes tomorrow - EXCEPT one of them is holed up inside one of the decorative pieces and won't come out which would be no biggie except the decorative piece is one of the ONLY things not going with the tank :vent. I've put the whole piece into a bucket of tank water and covered it in the hopes that he will come out and I can remove the piece before he darts back in...otherwise I guess she is getting a free piece of decoration, lol.

oh no! I hope he comes out and you can catch him!

He must really like that decoration. Hope you can get him out.

Have you tried to hold the decoration over the bucket out of the water? We have the same problem with ours when we are trying to move fish around. A lot of times we can just do that and shake the decoration a little bit and the usually come out.

Hope that helps.

Well, he never did decide to come out (the shape/structure of the decoration is such that there is no way to force them out once they go in - little buggars!) so I explained the situation to her when the arrived today and she just took him decoration and all with the plan of dropping the whole thing into her tank and waiting until he is comfortable enough to venture out so she can take the decor back out. Poor guy was really stressed by the move yesterday, I felt bad for him.
The good news, though, that they left with not only the two bristlenose but also the two pictus cats that I needed a new home for AND she was thrilled with the tank.
The spot where the tank was looks really empty - I am trying to get used to how much more space there is there now.