My Cory's Face Has Been Sucked Up!

[Katty]

Oh god... I went to go feed my fish tonight when I noticed my corydora was stuck to the filter intake and not moving... There is a piece of sponge fitted around the filter so my neons wouldn't get sucked up, but wouldn't you know it, there was a tiny teeny hole in the sponge, and of all fish, my corydora got his face stuck in it. I turned off the filter and gave him a gentle prod and he wiggled himself free. And his face looked horrible! The mouth area with the suckers is completely pulled forward and there's some red splotches(blood?). He just sort of crash landed into the plants after that. His whole head looked sort of swollen and red. These corydoras have been driving me nuts lately... I don't know if it was sick and got sucked up since it was tired or if it was just a freak occurance. They've also been doing this air gulping thing all the time (Link to the topic I made about it)

Picture:

Do you think he'll get better? I don't even know if he can eat with a mouth like that and I gave up on feeding for tonight. I feel like an idiot now but there's nothing I really could or can do besides patch up that hole. None of the tiny neons got sucked up, but somehow a 2 inch fish managed to get its head stuck?? Very strange.

 

[Baccus]

The Poor cory ! Its mouth really does look in bad shape. As long as nothing to permanant has been done by its adventure into the filter inlet I think the biggest concerns will be infections due to damaged skin and trying to eat. Can it get some particually soft food so it doesn't have to strain its mouth parts trying to snuffle around in susbstrate and chew on the food a heap?. Just how it actually got its mouth part stuck in/on the filter most likely happened because the cory found some food on the filter or could smell food in the vacinity and was trying to reach it.
Do you have any pics of the filter set up? My husband suspects that the sponge that you have/ had on the end of the filter is the primary culprit. Especially with a hole being on the end (end? I'm guessing), this would have created an area of least resistance making a sort of suction vortex concentrated at this point. The pull could have been so strong that even a healthy fish would have had trouble removing itself from the hole. I'm sure as a kid you would have played with the suction of a bath tub as the water escaped down the drain, this is the same type of effect I think may have happened with your filter sponge.
One of my large Peppered cory's excelled herself a couple of weeks ago by getting herself wedged inside a hole that goes through a rock. Now they have had this rock for months without problems but she still acheived the near impossible. Luckily I saw her dilema and was able to smash (very carefully) the rock away from her using a small sledge hammer and a brick to keep the rock off the ground- her head was almost out one end of the hole and her tail was swishing around out the other end, hence the balancing act with the rock and the brick. She has had no long lasting effects, if any thing she is a bit more careful of interesting hidey holes. I know this story doesn't help your immediate problem but it does show they are resilient.
Hope your Cory survives ok.

 

[Katty]

The Poor cory ! Its mouth really does look in bad shape. As long as nothing to permanant has been done by its adventure into the filter inlet I think the biggest concerns will be infections due to damaged skin and trying to eat. Can it get some particually soft food so it doesn't have to strain its mouth parts trying to snuffle around in susbstrate and chew on the food a heap?. Just how it actually got its mouth part stuck in/on the filter most likely happened because the cory found some food on the filter or could smell food in the vacinity and was trying to reach it.
Do you have any pics of the filter set up? My husband suspects that the sponge that you have/ had on the end of the filter is the primary culprit. Especially with a hole being on the end (end? I'm guessing), this would have created an area of least resistance making a sort of suction vortex concentrated at this point. The pull could have been so strong that even a healthy fish would have had trouble removing itself from the hole. I'm sure as a kid you would have played with the suction of a bath tub as the water escaped down the drain, this is the same type of effect I think may have happened with your filter sponge.
One of my large Peppered cory's excelled herself a couple of weeks ago by getting herself wedged inside a hole that goes through a rock. Now they have had this rock for months without problems but she still acheived the near impossible. Luckily I saw her dilema and was able to smash (very carefully) the rock away from her using a small sledge hammer and a brick to keep the rock off the ground- her head was almost out one end of the hole and her tail was swishing around out the other end, hence the balancing act with the rock and the brick. She has had no long lasting effects, if any thing she is a bit more careful of interesting hidey holes. I know this story doesn't help your immediate problem but it does show they are resilient.
Hope your Cory survives ok.

Yeah... I was thinking about it today and realized that the sponge probably got filled with gunk (it's pretty brown right now I'm going to clean it in a few minutes) and so the small hole was sucking stuff in at super-strength. But without the sponge the slits in the intake are ridiculously large, so if a neon drifted towards it at night it would easily go right into the tube. With a previous filter, with much smaller slits, a neon still managed to get stuck and die so I thought I would be extra careful with this one. Guess it backfired. I'm not sure what to do though to keep the neons from going in without the sponge mucking up and creating a suction hole.

 

[Katty]

Oh... He's dead. I saw him in the corner as I was cleaning and thought he was resting, but then I checked and he was stiff and dead. There was a large, red area to the side of his head. Internal bleeding or something I guess.

Here's the filter with and without the sponge. The red arrow is about where the cory got his mouth stuck. The sponge is falling apart and I'm not sure at this point which is safer (or more dangerous). Does anyone have any thoughts or solutions? Also the pic is after I cleaned it, it was pretty gunky before.

And now I've only got two cories, one newer bronze and one albino that I got at the same time as the now deceased cory. I don't think I should get any more, I just got two otos who are messier than I expected, but I feel bad just leaving the two by themselves.

 

[vickers]

Oh... He's dead. I saw him in the corner as I was cleaning and thought he was resting, but then I checked and he was stiff and dead. There was a large, red area to the side of his head. Internal bleeding or something I guess.

Here's the filter with and without the sponge. The red arrow is about where the cory got his mouth stuck. The sponge is falling apart and I'm not sure at this point which is safer (or more dangerous). Does anyone have any thoughts or solutions? Also the pic is after I cleaned it, it was pretty gunky before.

And now I've only got two cories, one newer bronze and one albino that I got at the same time as the now deceased cory. I don't think I should get any more, I just got two otos who are messier than I expected, but I feel bad just leaving the two by themselves.

Sorry to hear you lost the cory, you could put some Tights over the filter intake?

 

[Baccus]

I am trying to picture the width of the slits in your filter inlet and am comming up blank as all my filters with a plastic slitted end cover are probably only a few mm wide, even baby guppies and bristle noses, nor have my neon tetras (as far as I can tell) have not gone up them but its a different story for Cherry Shrimp. Instead of putting a sponge on the end of the filter (its probably making your pump work extra hard anyway by restricting flow) I think you could modify one of those small plastic pots with all the holes in them that you often get live aquarium plants potted up in. These holes in the pot are square rather than elongated, but they might still be too big if you have any fry in the tank. We actually use one of these modified pots on the end of our drainage hose (when cleaning the tank) it really helps get rid of any really big bits of gunk, while preventing any adult guppies going up the pipe -they really have no sense of self preservation

, but we always swap it for a much finer almost guaze filter if we are cleaning a fry tank. Failing modifying a plant pot to fit your filter tube, can you go to your local petshop and get a new finer end piece? I find that almost all my Aqua One and Aqua World filter ends are interchangable, so a different brand might have a finer filter end that your after.
Just as an after thought are you sure the act of the tetra getting stuck on the filter killed it or could it have possibly died in the tank but got swept towards the filter in let making it look like the tetra died while stuck on it? I am sure almost any healthy fish (except for curious gluttons) are fully capable of stearing clear of a filter intake even when asleep.

 

[Katty]

It was a young green neon tetra, which may be because it was young it was just too weak, but it was wedged in there pretty tight and was alive when I got it out but died a day later, it was squished. If you look up "Green Neon Tetra" on wikipedia it says "Avoid having a filter with excessively strong water intake because this little fish is prone to get sucked in by strong currents, perhaps even more so than the Neon Tetra." so they might just be weak swimmers in general. I'm not sure, but I'd hate to go look at the tank and see no neons swimming but find a fish milkshake in the filter

All the plant pots I've ever seen just have long slats like this picture, so I'm not sure if those kind would do any good. I think tights would muck up too fast, my fish poo a lot.

I found this, it would fit my filter, but I don't want to pay $5 to ship a sponge!

 

[Baccus]

Sorry to hear the albino cory died.

I posted my previous post before you put the pics up, that's what you get for trying to do two many things at once...reply, tidy a house, find info.

Ok, its clearer now that you put up the pictures, can't say I've seen that sort of all in one filter intake. Even my self contained tank has the end piece removable, I'll get some pics and post. When you said you had a sponge on the end I was envisioning something much thicker/ denser.

 

[micko]

How about going to a hardware store, buying a piece of bathroom waste pipe, the bath waste, not toilet and drill a number of holes through it using fine drill bits. Cut to the size you want it and place it outside of your filter. Hope this helps.

 

[Baccus]

Got a couple of pictures of my two type

The blue one is in my neon tetra tank

And the black one is off one of my Aqua One or Aqua World filters

The blue type I have had small cherry shrimp survive going up into the overhead filter set up but the tetras have never had a problem with it.
I was thinking maybe you could try putting some material gauze type material or some of an old fish net (I usually have a couple laying around that have developed a hole and no good for catching fish any more) over the intake. These types of material might not clog up as quickly as tights/ stockings but might slow down the sucking effect of the intake enough to prevent any small fish being caught in the pull of the pump. You could try putting obsticules such as plants closer to the filter in let but real ones might just end up with their leaves plastered over the entire thing. Its that or maybe try jamming some filter wool down into the filter cap part, only then when you clean it you would have to knock it out and give it a rinse to clear it of accumilated muck.
Hope these ideas help. It's never nice to end up with a fish puree

Poly pipe or pvc pipe could be your friend here too, as Micko suggested get a piece that will cover your intake and just drill a heap of small holes in it to allow it to still suck in water. Personally I'd go with the poly, its flexible and a bit easier to work with.

 

[Katty]

Thanks for the ideas guys. I'm not one for power tools so probably won't go that route.

Floss in the end could work, just sort of concerned that it might get sucked up the tube and into the propeller though, that would be a mess. If its not one thing, it's another, isn't it?

Do you think the neons would be OK with just the bare intake? I'm not sure if I'm just overreacting.

 

[Baccus]

I'd give the bare filter inlet a try, just do it while you can watch and see if any fish get into diffuculties with. If they do turning the power off to the pump will allow them to swim off pretty quickly as long as they aren't wedged in. I don't know if your set up is an all in one hood type of deal or if you have a seperate hanging sort of filter. If your really worried you could try changing the filter set up to the little plastic internal setups that you run off an airpump and stuff with filter wool and charcoal. This type was the only type around when I was a kid and apart from having to clean the wool or replace it I don't recall ever having a problem.

 

[Tizer]

i cant imagine any fish would get stuck on an intake pipe unless it was sick or ill in the first place.

 

[lilfishie]

1 of my Bronze cories did a similar thing except got stuck where you change the flow he died that same night

Sorry about your lil one

 

[Harlequins]

I have 2 of these filter inlets in my tank and never had a problem with any fish getting suck in the slits or being sucked in,and i have loads of corys and small pygmies & tetras.

So maybe the cory was poorly in the first place? most fish are strong enough when fit to swim away from the inlets...

Sorry you lost your cory.