Once a day, and only after dark
A kuhli loach needs feeding once daily, and the feed belongs to the night. This eel-like loach is a committed nocturnal scavenger: by day the group is threaded through plant roots, leaf litter, and the top layer of the substrate, effectively invisible. As darkness falls they emerge and spend hours sifting sand and sniffing out morsels with their barbels. Food added in the morning is a meal for every other fish in the tank and nothing at all for the kuhlis, which is how loaches come to be thin in tanks whose owners swear they feed plenty.
Scavenger does not mean self-sufficient
Kuhlis have the same cleanup-crew reputation as corydoras, and it misleads the same way. Fallen scraps are genuinely part of what they eat — they are built to find them — but scraps are a supplement, not a ration. A group of kuhlis needs its own sinking food delivered to its own level at its own hour: micro pellets that fall fast, a fragment of wafer, crushed staple food pushed down in a gentle current toward their shelters. Delivered nightly in modest quantity, that ration keeps a group in the round, active condition that makes them such entertaining night viewing.
Getting food to a fish that hides
Placement beats quantity. Learn where the group spends the day — a particular root tangle, a cave, a dense plant stand — and drop the night feed just outside it, so the scent reaches them without a long exposed journey. Feeding the surface fish first, at the far end of the tank, holds their attention while the loach food sinks unmolested. A dim blue or moonlight setting, if your light has one, lets you confirm the mission worked: within minutes the kuhlis should be out, looping over the substrate in their sinuous search pattern, barbels working. If they are not appearing, either the food is being intercepted or the group is not well, and both possibilities deserve attention.
What goes on the night menu
Small sinking pellets are the dependable base, small enough for a kuhli's narrow mouth. Frozen daphnia and bloodworm, thawed and released low in the water so they settle onto the substrate, are relished and get even shy individuals feeding boldly. A piece of blanched vegetable occasionally varies the diet, though kuhlis lean more carnivorous than their grazing tankmates. Avoid large hard wafers as the main offering; by the time one softens enough for small mouths, it may have been monopolised or begun to foul. Several small items scattered across the group's territory serve a group of six or more far better than one rich lump.
Hunger looks different in a nocturnal fish
A kuhli that is out and restless in full daylight is worth a second look: persistent daytime searching often means the night ration is not landing, or that something has unsettled the group. Equally, uneaten pellets sitting where you dropped them at lights-out signal overfeeding or interception elsewhere. Because you will rarely see these fish eat, condition is judged by glimpses — bodies should look smooth and rounded, not pinched behind the head. Watch for those glimpses at feeding time each night rather than trying to census them by day.
The feed most likely to be forgotten entirely
A feed scheduled after the household's day ends is the easiest one in fishkeeping to skip, and a shared tank makes it worse, since everyone assumes it is someone else's job. Putting the kuhlis' night feed into KinsLe's Care Teams as a fixed late duty, marked complete when the pellets go in, protects the one meal this species cannot afford to have left to memory.