[rininger85]

So a disclaimer before I get started: I've never actually watched finding nemo, but I have to imagine it goes something like this...

I come home from work and go to feed my fish and to my surprise my Occelaris clown is gone! I'm panicked thinking the poor guy jumped to his death while I was gone, so I'm searching high and low behind rocks trying to find him and he's NOT THERE!

My wife was home early today and has been cleaning the house and said that she didn't sweep him up... so I stick my head in under the tank to see if I can see my poor Nemo clownfish behind my sump on the ground and to my surprise this is what I find...

 

[rininger85]

somehow my poor clownfish managed to get sucked in to my overflow and made his way down to my sump... but not only that, he then managed to jump over a baffle and get stuck between my baffles... so I'm thinking how the heck am I going to get him out? I'll admit, a fish net was not my first thought... but it did finally hit me to get a fish net and stick it between the baffles, then he just swam to the other side... so then I got a plastic spatula that I use for mixing salt and stuck it on the other side to try and chase him in to the net (mind you, my baffles are only 1" apart)... he ended up jumping back in to my 1st chamber with my equipment, so I chased him around the equipment and he jumped back in to the baffles.... so I went to the baffles again and he ended up in my return chamber, finally able to catch him from the return chamber since there wasn't as much water in there and return him to the tank...

Now I need to figure out how to keep it from happening again... hmmm

 

[ska d]

Crazy Clowns. Is it a Canadian clown, I heard they are a sketchy bunch. Lol.

 

[rininger85]

lol idk, it could have crossed the boarder illegally... there have been some of those crazy Canadians trying to swim across the great lakes to get in to Michigan lately... think I've heard of two or three different occasions in the last couple months of trying to swim across to Michigan and getting picked up by fishing boats / police and escorted back...

 

[Phillrodrigo30]

Can you put a strainer on your drain line. I have one on mine it works good my little tiny tomato clown swims in between the teeth of my overflow and then swims back out.

 

[rininger85]

I'll probably end up putting the piece of Plexiglas back on the top, just put a spacer on top to space it up a bit so it doesn't slow my overflow, but small enough that the clown can't fit in it.

 

[ynot65]

My wife turned me on to a plastic screen that they sell in hobby stores used for cross stitching, it's plastic and semi ridged and easy to cut with scissors. It makes an excellent screening for any application. I new I kept her for the last 28 years for something! Sorry dear, LOL she reads these also!

 

[rininger85]

LOL, I know what you are talking about, my grandma used to keep that stuff around all the time so anytime we went over there we'd get the yarn out and start making stuff using those... that would be good so it doesn't restrict the water if my water level does happen to rise...

thankfully I think I have my DIY PVC overflow working great finally, its been running for 3 days without any air getting trapped in the line, before my latest revisions I had to reset it every 2nd day or it would fail, so now its just updating it to keep the clown in his tank...

 

[Salty Dog24]

Glad you caught him.