My rope fish is stuck in the overflow :(

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anarekist

anarekist

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Apr 4, 2011
2,177
9
38
Los Angeles
So i thought i had blocked off all the teeth on the overflows last night with foam but leave it to the rope fish to find some opening. so now he's chilling in the overflow and luckily i had accidentally dropped another piece of foam there to block his escape completely.
now im wondering will he be ok? i found him this morning but couldn't take care of it cause i had to get to work.
cant possibly fish him out from the top cause it's 30" down and the opening is 6 inches at best :\
should i just try to remove the foam and leave a net at the end of the overflow's pipe work and just flush him out? will this hurt him? sigh..:cry:
 
just flush him out and be ready to catch him, he should be fine. My baby pbass used to take a ride down my 2 inch overflow into the sump everyday lol.
 
I also had the experience of having my ropefish getting stuck in the overflow before, twice. The first time I flushed it out and it got caught in the filter socks, minor skin damages which recovered in a few days. The second time I use a small net to gentlely push him back. As a precaution, I now place a large piece of sponge to prevent the rope from entering again.

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I used to wrap my overflow boxes with plastic screen, like plastic canvas sold at craft stores. it does get dirty, but i rather clean that then lose critters and stuff into my sump. Id let it stick above the water surface by about an inch. it could be easily slid up and down as needed. Id cut pieces and tie them together with tiny plastic zip ties. it's worked great for me for years.
 
i always had issues with my overflow. Especially my old south american lungifish used to always end up in there regardless of what ai did!
 
can you reach your hand into your overflow? you could try to chase him to the top with your hand then net him? or maybe just scoop him with your hand? i used to have a bichir that would swim to my hands and let me pick her up out of the water instead of netting her.
 
ok got him out, i had to make a fish hook with a paper clip attached to some extra air hose i had to get to the foam i had covering the overflow exit bulkhead. then i put a colander im using to sift sand from pebbles at the end of that pipe in my sump. i plugged the pipe so some water can build up in the over flow, then i released it and flushed the lil sucker out of there, threw him back in the tank and made sure i had foam covering all the teeth in my overflow. every time i hear a loud splash im frantically looking to make sure he didnt jump out or something, lol i love him but he's kinda stressful. last i look he was chilling across the teeth of the overflows, using the suction of water to hold himself up there.. makes me nervous...
 
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