I have recently changed my fish into a Juwel lido 120 smaller tank, from a bigger tank. New one has an internal canister filter and have just found 10 dead fry in the filter today. The fry have been sucked into the filter. My old tank had a large external filter and the tube from it went into the tank and at the bottom of the tube was the inlet pipe. When fry appeared, I just wrapped a bit of mesh stocking around it for a few weeks until the fry were bigger, but I just don't know what to do to avoid them being sucked into this filter. It is like a box in the corner of the filter and there are inlets all over it. I cannot think of anything that I can cover them with as there is nowhere to tie it onto. Any ideas??
The inlets are like grid lines about 4 inches long and 16th of an inch wide each hole, so that would not work. It has to be something that allows the filter to work while protecting the fry.
Stocking mesh over the inlet pipe worked great for a few weeks while the fry were tiny with my old set up.
ANYONE got a solution - apart from a breeding trap as I dont want to stress mummy fish by putting her in there???

Only thing I can think of is to get a different filter, or get a mesh divider and divide that corner from the rest of the tank.

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Or put pantyhose over the whole thing?

I cut a small rectangle of filter sponge, then cut out a hole for it to fit over the intake.
This works pretty well, and acts as a great pre-filter.
Every couple weeks I pull it off and clean it.

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Thanks guys but how would I attach these to the filter box. It is like this - an oblong box embedded in the tank with a set of vertical slits of about 4 inches long both sides for the intake?
The inlets are like grid lines about 4 inches long and 16th of an inch wide each hole.

mmm, not sure how you'd do that right enough. So the filter box doesn't come out of the tank? A picture might help us come up with an idea.

Maybe you could work out a way to to fit a strip of filter foam over the intake sections.

Found the tank online and checking it out....

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Does the top come off the overflow?
If it does then cut a block of foam (use filter kind) and put it in the top make it slightly bigger than the opening and the slits...
Or wrap some vinyl window window screen material around the outside to cover the slits.

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"Buddha in your tank"

thanks. If the inlets were covered, it would hinder the waterflow quite a lot though eh?
vinyl window screen material ?? what is that?

I recently had some fry added to my home from some mollies that I had. I was afraid of them getting sucked up as well so what I did was I put them in their own small tank and put a smaller filter on it so that the suction wasn't as great. I still put a sponge over the end of the HOB filter just in case they got close to it. Never had any problems with any of them getting sucked into the filter.

I used a 1.5 gallon tank and used a 1-3 gallon filter with the sponge over the intake. Once they started getting bigger, I switched them over to a ten gallon with a ten gallon filter on it. They are about 4 weeks old now and are thriving.

Hope this helps you.

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Yes, it probably would, if you have a high stocking level that could be a problem but if not it probably wouldn't matter. Do you have live plants in the tank? That would help make up for the reduction of water flow through the filter and they are great for fry too.