Brief for a Fish the Sitter May Never See
A kuhli loach spends daylight hours buried in sand, threaded through plants, or draped inside a cave, so your briefing starts by protecting the sitter from a false emergency. Tell them plainly that counting zero kuhlis on a daytime visit is the expected result, and that lifting wood, digging in the substrate, or shining a torch into hides to confirm everyone is alive will stress the fish and cloud the tank.
The Signs That Do Matter in a Kuhli Loach
A kuhli loach in trouble behaves against its own nature, so describe the reversals clearly. A kuhli out in the open at midday, swimming in frantic vertical loops up the glass again and again, lying on its side away from cover, or showing bands that have faded to a dull wash are all call-you-today events. The sitter's response is a photo or short video if the fish is visible, a check that the filter is running, and a message to you — never a rescue attempt with a net, since a panicked kuhli burrows, tangles, and injures its soft, scale-free skin easily.
Escape-Proofing the Kuhli Tank
A kuhli loach can leave a tank through a gap you would not credit, so the lid section of this briefing is non-negotiable. Walk the sitter around the rim and show them every cut-out for cables and filter pipes, and the covers or foam you use to block them. The rule: the lid and its gap covers go back exactly as found after every feed, and the tank is never left open while food is fetched or water is carried. If a kuhli is ever found on the floor or a dry surface and shows any movement, it goes straight back into the tank water with wet hands and you are called immediately; a still fish is reported to you rather than disposed of on the sitter's judgement, because loaches have surprised owners before now.
Nothing Goes Into the Water
A kuhli loach has no scales, and that single fact shapes the strictest rule in this handover: the sitter adds nothing to the tank beyond the food you portioned and, if you have written it down, conditioned top-up water. No treatments suggested by a visitor, no cleaning of the filter or glass with anything but the plain scraper you leave, no fertiliser, no borrowed product from another pet's supplies. Chemicals that a scaled fish shrugs off can burn a kuhli's skin, and a well-meaning addition is harder to undo than a day of waiting.
Feeding a Night Fish Without Overdoing It
Feed a kuhli loach after dark, so put the timing in writing rather than assuming your sitter's routine matches the fish. Portion the sinking food and show them the corner where it should land once the lights are low, in an amount the group clears overnight. A sitter feeding at noon will conclude the food was ignored and add more, and that doubled ration rotting in the sand is how a stable loach tank slides. Ask them to note whether the morning shows leftovers; untouched food two evenings running, in a fish whose whole life is organised around finding it, is a quiet report worth sending you with a photo of the feeding corner.
A Handover Built on Trusting the Hiding
Finish by standing at the tank together at dusk if you can, watching your kuhlis come out and feed, so the sitter has seen normal with their own eyes. Setting that dusk routine, the gap-covered lid, and the add-nothing rule down in KinsLe as a Care Pass means your sitter can re-check what healthy hiding looks like at midnight, instead of lifting the woodwork apart looking for a loach that was never lost.