Fish in Red Sea 425 overflow

[BirdFish5000]

Yup, another fish in the overflow box thread. Here's my version:

I have the lid to my Red Sea 425 overflow box off, because that's where I have some fans mounted. While doing my water change today, with the clearview lid off the tank, my exquisite fairy wrasse managed to jump into the overflow box.

First things first, I tried to just get him out with a net. No luck; fish is very evasive, and the pipes in the way make it difficult to do much with the net.

Next thought was to shut the system off, and remove one the pipes to drain the box and hopefully have the fish come with the water. When a fish had gotten into the overflow of my other RS tank, that worked perfectly, so I figured it would work great here. No luck, however; the pipes are seemingly stuck and obviously I didn't want to break anything.

So, for now - I took the plastic weir teeth panels off and raised the display tank water level so there's 1 1/2 to 2 inches approximately of room to get out of the overflow. Hopefully the wrasse gets smart enough to figure his way out.

If he decides to remain his stupid self and stay in the overflow, please give me any further ideas/suggestions you may have to help get him out of there. I'm all ears.

 

[dstockwell]

Can you use the same idea of a small net a bend it small enough to fit inside.

 

[BirdFish5000]

Yeah, I'll swing by the LFS and see what my net options are.

 

[BirdFish5000]

Phew, was finally able to get him out. It's after dark, so the fish room was completely dark with the lights out. I figured I'd give one more go at getting home out before heading to bed. I left the room lights off, and used a strong flash light. Very conveniently, the flashlight lured him to the top of the overflow, where, with some patience, I was able to catch him with a small net.

 

[BirdFish5000]

The little butthead is swimming around today all nonchalant, like nothing happened. lol