Help! Fish stuck!
- Thread starter PygmyMitch
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- help lodged stuck in filter
OP
OP
PygmyMitch
Fish Fanatic
Thank you all for the input. I definitely will try and block up that cable section with some sponge or filter floss to prevent the same thing happening again. I will be sending an email to the manufacturer with the picture attached. Hopefully they can improve there products with the next range. Thanks again.
TwoTankAmin
Fish Connoisseur
A few observations which might help. Otos are basically small plecos. Pleco like to hide in caves and they also spawn in them. They like tigh spaces. When we do not provide these, the fish will do the "nest they can" to find a space cavelike.
But the fish are not all that smart amd they may fo in without realizing they may not be able to get out. For me, breeding plecos is a big part of my hobby. I have tanks full of them and I havd a large assortment of caves in various shapes and sizes. Male plecos claim caves and will defend them.
Some times I sell fish and one of them may be a male in his cave. believe it or not such males sometime will not come out of the cave. I can remove it from the tank and pout out the water. But the p[leco spreads its pectoral fins and since he is head first in the cave, the ends of the pectorals act as brakes. One cannot pull the fish out, shake the fish out or coax it out. This even includes removing the cave to a container of water and hoping it comes out.
Noe since I have to get the fish out so it can be included in the shipment. that leave only one option. I have to break the terra cotta cave into piece to get the fish out. And these fish are stubborn. If there is enough vcave left for it to hold itself in place, it will. So I have to use a hammer and a couple of pliers to smash apart the cave slowly until the fish has nothing left to hold" onto. This is alwatyss achallenge because i do not want to smash the fish while trying to break apart the cave.
If i had the problem described by the OP my solution would have been to break the plastiv on the filter until the fish could exit. I probablly would have used whatever tools (including my dremel tool) to cradually remove parts of the filter as carefully as possbly intol the fish was freed or I accidentally killed it. I can say that so far in having to break apart 5 or 6 caves over the years that all the fish survived O.K.
A cave only costs a few doallrs, a filter costs a lot more. These days I can afford to break a filter and replace it to rescue a fish. At least one of my hang-ons. I am not sure I would be as willing to destroy more expensive equipment if the fish trapped was fairly inexpensive. But I work with very pricey plecos and most of them are worth more than any filter, so it si an easy decision to smash a cave.
Most bottom dwelling fish with downward facing mouths and upward facing eyes hide. They like to hie in spaces that are harder for other fish to enter. The oto saw a cave-like space. I believe it entered theogh the end of the space and then could not figure out how to deal with the slit. It managed to get stuck. I lost a male P. nichlsi years back because it swam into a mass of Java fern roots end they got caught in his gill flaps when he tried to back out. It died trapped.
I have had plecos swim into some strange spaces over the years including filter intakes while I was cleaning the prefilter sponge. For I while I replaced the cross part in an ATI sponge with an open ring which emitted fine bubbles in a circle. And one dau I found this in a bn grow out tank/ I move it into a fry tank.
The point is fish that tend to use caves, or other sorts of hiding places, will find something else that works when we do not provide what they really want/need for this. I prefilter my filter intakes for three reasons. One is the obvious use- the prevent big junk for going on. Two is they collect bits of food which usually get eatebn by something. Three, they prevent gish and inverts from getting inside the filter because they can or because they get sucked into it.
After a repeat of the above spawn I went back to the standard ATI cross piece where we notmally connect the airline.
But the fish are not all that smart amd they may fo in without realizing they may not be able to get out. For me, breeding plecos is a big part of my hobby. I have tanks full of them and I havd a large assortment of caves in various shapes and sizes. Male plecos claim caves and will defend them.
Some times I sell fish and one of them may be a male in his cave. believe it or not such males sometime will not come out of the cave. I can remove it from the tank and pout out the water. But the p[leco spreads its pectoral fins and since he is head first in the cave, the ends of the pectorals act as brakes. One cannot pull the fish out, shake the fish out or coax it out. This even includes removing the cave to a container of water and hoping it comes out.
Noe since I have to get the fish out so it can be included in the shipment. that leave only one option. I have to break the terra cotta cave into piece to get the fish out. And these fish are stubborn. If there is enough vcave left for it to hold itself in place, it will. So I have to use a hammer and a couple of pliers to smash apart the cave slowly until the fish has nothing left to hold" onto. This is alwatyss achallenge because i do not want to smash the fish while trying to break apart the cave.
If i had the problem described by the OP my solution would have been to break the plastiv on the filter until the fish could exit. I probablly would have used whatever tools (including my dremel tool) to cradually remove parts of the filter as carefully as possbly intol the fish was freed or I accidentally killed it. I can say that so far in having to break apart 5 or 6 caves over the years that all the fish survived O.K.
A cave only costs a few doallrs, a filter costs a lot more. These days I can afford to break a filter and replace it to rescue a fish. At least one of my hang-ons. I am not sure I would be as willing to destroy more expensive equipment if the fish trapped was fairly inexpensive. But I work with very pricey plecos and most of them are worth more than any filter, so it si an easy decision to smash a cave.
Most bottom dwelling fish with downward facing mouths and upward facing eyes hide. They like to hie in spaces that are harder for other fish to enter. The oto saw a cave-like space. I believe it entered theogh the end of the space and then could not figure out how to deal with the slit. It managed to get stuck. I lost a male P. nichlsi years back because it swam into a mass of Java fern roots end they got caught in his gill flaps when he tried to back out. It died trapped.
I have had plecos swim into some strange spaces over the years including filter intakes while I was cleaning the prefilter sponge. For I while I replaced the cross part in an ATI sponge with an open ring which emitted fine bubbles in a circle. And one dau I found this in a bn grow out tank/ I move it into a fry tank.
The point is fish that tend to use caves, or other sorts of hiding places, will find something else that works when we do not provide what they really want/need for this. I prefilter my filter intakes for three reasons. One is the obvious use- the prevent big junk for going on. Two is they collect bits of food which usually get eatebn by something. Three, they prevent gish and inverts from getting inside the filter because they can or because they get sucked into it.
After a repeat of the above spawn I went back to the standard ATI cross piece where we notmally connect the airline.
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