Briefing a feeder for kuhli loaches means preparing them for an apparently empty tank. These slender, eel-like loaches spend daylight hours threaded through plant roots, leaf litter, and the gaps under bogwood, and a visitor who cannot find the fish will be tempted to lift decor, tap glass, or add extra food just in case. Your brief has to replace that worry with trust: the loaches are almost certainly in there, the feeding happens at night, and the best visit is a short, calm one.
Make the feeding an after-dark appointment
Kuhli loaches forage once the tank lights go out, so the single most important line in your brief is timing. Ask the feeder to come in the evening, drop one pre-portioned measure of sinking micro-pellets or a small wafer near the loaches' usual hiding tangle after lights-out, and leave the room. Food offered at midday mostly feeds the filter and fouls the substrate while the loaches sleep through it. If an evening visit is impossible some days, an early morning portion before the lights come on is the acceptable substitute; consistency of amount matters more than the exact hour.
Warn them that seeing nothing is normal
A holiday feeder judges their own success by watching fish eat, and kuhlis deny them that satisfaction. Explain beforehand that the tank may show no loach at all for days, that this is the species behaving exactly as it should, and that on lucky evenings they might spot a banded, snake-like body looping over the gravel or draped across a leaf. Forbid the rescue behaviors kindly but clearly: no moving wood to count heads, no shining a phone torch into caves, and no doubling the next portion because yesterday's seemed untouched. Uneaten food disappearing overnight is the loaches' signature, and it is enough.
Put the lid at the top of the checklist
Kuhli loaches explore upward at night and can pass through gaps that look impossibly small, including filter cutouts and cable holes. Your brief should ask the feeder to check the cover is seated fully after every visit and to glance at the floor around the tank during each call, since a loach found quickly and returned to the water sometimes recovers. This is the one genuinely urgent item on the page: a missing decoration is never an emergency, but a fish on the carpet is. Leave a small net and a jug beside the tank so a rescue, if it happens, takes seconds rather than a search through cupboards.
Keep hands and chemicals out of the tank
Kuhlis are scaleless and sensitive, and they live pressed against the substrate where anything added to the water settles. The brief should rule out all additions beyond the portioned food: no water treatments, no fertilizer doses unless you schedule them explicitly, and no hands in the water, since lotions and soaps ride in on skin. Top-ups, if the level drops, come only from the jug of treated water you leave ready. If the water ever smells wrong or looks milky, the instruction is to feed nothing, photograph the tank, and call you.
Reassure the feeder with a simple sign of life
Give your visitor one harmless way to confirm the loaches are well: the food spot test. The portion left by the hideout in the evening will be gone or scattered by morning, and the fine gravel around it often shows tiny furrows from the night's foraging. That, plus a running filter and a normal-looking tank, is a complete health report for this species. Recording those few lines in KinsLe's Care Pass means your feeder holds clear temporary access to the kuhli routine and the tank's key details for the trip, including the after-dark timing that makes the whole arrangement work.