Protecting Your Sick Fish From the Filter

[Kaida]

It's important to remember that when you have a fish who is sick, you need to protect it from your filter intake.  Often, an ill fish is weak and may not have the strength to avoid the suction of the filter.  The weak fish will get stuck to the filter intake, causing severe injury or a fairly prompt death.  A very simple way to avoid this is to cap the intake with a filter sponge.  This will provide an effective barrier to guard the fish.


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I use AquaClear sponges but any brand of filter sponge that fits over your filter's intake will work.  All you do is cut a slit in the top of the sponge and slide it on.  As you can see by the discoloration of this sponge in one of my hospital tanks, it's very well colonized with BB.  This is ugly but its not a bad thing since it provides extra biological filtration.