Bristlenose Plec Injured By Tetras

Hi Guys,
Just stopped in the middle of setting up the emergency 70L tank for my little bristlenose plec. During feeding time this evening I noticed his tail didn't look quite right. Then one of the glass bloodfin tetras swam down an nipped the BN's tail. On closer inspection this is not the first nip, so I'm moving him.
Firstly, any advice on catching a BN in a fully planted tank which also contains glass bloodfins, penguin tetras, and to top it all off, silver hatchet fish who tend to jump out of the water when startled? I'm thinking of taking quite a bit of water out of the tank to drop the water level, because the last thing I need is for a hatchet to jump out of the tank during the episode. Is using a bet for the BN the way forward, or should I use a tub, to avoid damage to spines etc.
Secondly, CC says minimum of 80cm tank, but my BN is only little, so will the 60cm 70L tank be ok?
Finally, will the BN be able to go back into the South American tank when he gets bigger, or will the tetra always nip him? If he can go back in that's fine, if not he can have the other 125L tank when the dwarf puffers are upgraded and I'll probably just increase the numbers of penguin & bloodfin tetra in the original tank.
Any advice appreciated.
Back to setting up the emergency tank.

Thanks Sue.

I'll also move the wood, and I've got some stones growing algae in the snail tank, so he can have those as well, along with all the decor at the bottom of the tank, because it's not as if the tetras use any of them. I've also got some plants I can move, so hopefully he wont find the emergency tank too bare.

I must remember to bring up the Seriously Fish site and leave it open on the appropriate page before placing the laptop in front of the tetra tank.

Well done. I think you deserve something stronger than beer........

ooo - I do like a happy ending!

Brilliant - so relieved for you as there's nothing worse than the situation being awry and lying in bed, wondering what situation you're going to face when you get up.

I feel exhausted this morning, and didn't really want to get out of bed to check on the tanks, but was very relieved to see the fish are ok.
When I saw the BN with a couple of nips on his tail I could have kicked myself for not noticing sooner.
As for the chaos involved in catching him, if the situation hadn't been so urgent, it would have been comedy gold. At one point I had him between 2 nets, and he still got out. Eventually I had to put a net over him when he was on the sand, then push the other net under the sand, then put a plastic tub into the tank to scoop up both nets to transfer him. A fair amount of substrate went with him, then I had trouble getting him out of the net with the sand in.    This morning I have noticed a moulted shrimp case in with Harry. No idea if I scooped it up with him, or if I've transferred some a shrimp or two with him.

This is one advantage to MTS - at least you have other tanks to move the BN to.

@Sue I have never needed any encouragement to indulge my MTS, but you do have a very good point there. This week I may also have to buy more filters to replace the spare spares that I had in other tanks. One spare was used for the recently re-homed Sherbon and Humbug, and the filter for Harry was the spare taken out of the main puffer tank. I'm now looking around the room and hoping that I don't have any more emergencies as I not longer have a spare tank (apart from the old 24L, which I was planning to put on the windowsill to grow more algae on rocks), and I only have multiple filters in the axolotl tanks.
I guess it could have been worse - the 340L tank is still in the packaging in the hallway, Harry could have ended up in that! 

It must be a nightmare with planted tanks.

That's putting it mildly Sue! I've been trying to catch the glowlight tetras in the 200l for at least 6 months. The little buggers seem to know I'm after them and they zoom off to the other side of the tank and the crossbar sitting across the middle of the tank doesn't help either.  Tat's why I've decided to completely empty the tank when I change the substrate.

Quote from: Fiona on July 08, 2016, 09:57:43 AM

....and the crossbar sitting across the middle of the tank doesn't help either.

I hated that with my Rio 125.

A design flaw if you ask me

I'll need to replant a few areas of the south american tank, there were a few plant casualties after catching Harry, but that also means that I can basically plant the whole of the bottom of the tank not that there are no bottom dwellers. I'm going to give it a while for everyone to calm down, replant the tank with my usual finesse (poke plants into the substrate, and tie stuff onto stuff), give it another week or so, then increase the numbers of fish of the species I already have in there.
Harry seems fine. He's had a wander around the tank. I tried to get some pictures, but ended up calling him by his previous name ("oh, you little bugger") when he scooted behind the bogwood.