Fish Keeps Getting Stuck In Actual Filter :(

[Kiwi03]

I bought a 10 gallon tank from petsmart. It was the starter kit and came with everything. Last week, my healthy female guppy got stuck in the actual filter. It's an intank filter- the petsmart brand one. I got her out but she died a couple days later. She was stuck in the bottom part with her head sticking out of the grates.

Last night, the exact same thing happened with my pregnant Molly She died right away. I took the filter out for the night because there's got to be a reason why they keep getting stuck. When I took the filter out, I found 4 dead babies

Why did this happen? Has anyone else had a problem with this type of filter?

Any recemendations for a new filter?

 

[fluttermoth]

It is almost certainly not a problem with the filter. Healthy fish should easily be able to swim away from a 'normal' sized filter.
 
I would suspect that your tank/filter isn't what we call' cycled'; that means it doesn't have a colony of good bacteria living in it to eat the ammonia the fish produce in their wastes.
 
That means the ammonia is building up in the water and making the fish sick (or killing them) and then they're getting sucked into the filter.
 
Put the filter back in, but wrap a piece of sponge or the foot of a (clean!) pair of tights over the intake to stop any more fish getting stuck.
 
Then you need to do large, daily water changes (at least 80 or 90%) until you can get some test kits (don't get the paper strip kind; you want ones that use a liquid or tablet) to monitor the water quality; ammonia and nitrite are the ones you need to be testing for.

 

[Mikey1]

i dont know exactly what the filter looks like, but you can try securing a piece of foam around the intake (where the water gets sucked in) this would allow water to flow through it but not the fish.....
 
on a side note....removing the filter from the tank or turning it off overnight will KILL your benficial bacteria!!....not a good thing!!
 
you will then need to cycle the tank again!

 

[eaglesaquarium]

The bacteria won't die off nearly that quickly, but the bigger concern would be the ammonia that could build up overnight...  
 
 
OP, filters are meant to run 24/7/365.  As fluttermoth states, the issue is probably that the bacteria needed to keep the fish from being killed by ammonia or nitrite poisoning are not present (or at least, not in sufficient quantity) in the filter to do the job sufficiently.  You are probably in a fish-in cycle, and you need to be doing daily water tests (ammonia and nitrite at a minimum) to determine the size and frequency of the water change you need to do.  Ammonia and nitrite should be zero at all times in a fully mature tank.  It should be zero in a newly set-up tank, but it won't be, so you just need to do frequent large water changes to keep the values as low as possible.

 

[Kiwi03]

I had my water tested last weekend at my fish store and everything came back fine. I will put the filter back in today. Both fishes that ended up in the filter were healthy? So I'm not sure what happened?

Is is comman for the babies to get sucked in the filter? That makes me very sad

 

[eaglesaquarium]

You really need your own liquid test kit.  When you get your water tested at a LFS, generally they don't tell you the specific values.  Did they use strips or a liquid test kit?  
 
Honestly, healthy fish don't get sucked to a filter.  They may have looked healthy, but the truth is they probably were not.  Many fish will not show signs of stress until they are VERY sick, because showing weakness can be a honing beacon for predators.
 
Honestly, a test kit is as essential for a fish keeper as the tank itself.