Well, I woke up this morning to find my babyfry platy, Carrot, sucked up against the filter intake! At first I thought she was dead, as I've only ever seen dead fish in this condition, but then I realized that she was alive. I let out a squeak and unplugged the whole tank. After I calmed down a bit, I put her in a little cup for observation.

One whole side of her looks really roughed up. She spends most of her time sitting on the bottom, breathing fairly normally. Her fins are clamped, though, and the ones on the right side are ragged from being sucked at for who knows how many hours. Also, her tummy looks sunken, even though she looked fine yesterday. I put some food in with her, but she didn't eat it so I had to take it out.

She's still with me now, 12 hours later, so I'm hoping she'll make it through this. Right now I still have her in the little plastic cup because I'm certain she wouldn't be able to handle any sort of prolonged current. She's only somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch long, and she can't swim very effectively right now. I've changed some of the water out oh-so-gently several times today to keep bad chemicals out and oxygen in, and I'm planning on doing the same thing till she starts at least swimming around. I just have some melafix right now, no salt, so I put a drop in her water cause I felt I had to do something. I really can't afford any new medicine...

Um, I know the cup thing could be a bad situation, but I'm not planning on letting it be that way. Anything else I'm doing wrong? Any suggestions?

I hope I don't have to tell you tomorrow that she's gone, but frankly I'm surprised she's made it this far.

Sorry to hear about your fry. Alot of people use those foam filter's inside of their tank when there are babies involved because of the same thing. Fry are very delicate,so there's a good chance that it has internal injuries from that happening.I had a small goldfish that completely lost it's fins & tail from the same thing.Her body sunk in,she couldn't swim,and by the next day her whole side of her body that was sucked up against the iontake tube had begun to severely bruise.I thought for sure that there was no way to save this poor thing.Fish really need to be in their tank with the filtration ,the correct water params,and your fish is Tropical,so a heater of course.If I were you,I'd spend around 4 dollars and buy a Breeder's net,attach it on the inside of your regular tank.That way,it keeps her in the main tank-controls her swimming & keeps her away from getting sucked up again. Make sure that all your water params are reading spot on. You can also add the Melafix. The net will keep the little one calmer. Good luck Hun,hope the poor thing makes it. (By the way,my little one made it. She spent 5 weeks in the Breeder's net-didn't swim for almost four of those weeks-looked even worse before she got better.Today though,she's 100% again! Nothing like dotoring a fish back to health! So you do have some chance at saving it!

Sorry to hear about your fry. Alot of people use those foam filter's inside of their tank when there are babies involved because of the same thing. Fry are very delicate,so there's a good chance that it has internal injuries from that happening.I had a small goldfish that completely lost it's fins & tail from the same thing.Her body sunk in,she couldn't swim,and by the next day her whole side of her body that was sucked up against the intake tube had begun to severely bruise.I thought for sure that there was no way to save this poor thing.Fish really need to be in their tank with the filtration ,the correct water params,and your fish is Tropical,so a heater of course.If I were you,I'd spend around 4 dollars and buy a Breeder's net,attach it on the inside of your regular tank.That way,it keeps her in the main tank-controls her swimming & keeps her away from getting sucked up again. Make sure that all your water params are reading spot on. You can also add the Melafix. The net will keep the little one calmer. Good luck Hun,hope the poor thing makes it. (By the way,my little one made it. She spent 5 weeks in the Breeder's net-didn't swim for almost four of those weeks-looked even worse before she got better.Today though,she's 100% again! Nothing like doctoring a fish back to health! So you do have some chance at saving it!

Well, thanks Devs, for the advice/inspiration.

Unfortunately, Carrot was just too damaged to pull through.

She died peacefully, though, resting in the dark next to me and my computer. Hopefully she'll find some bubbles to play with in the big aquarium in the sky.

Man... I have bad luck with fish. Maybe I should rethink the goldfish thing for the sake of the fin-kids...

Ah kortniee, So sorry that Little Carrot didn't make it.As I said with fry,they're just so delicate,that the internal damage was too severe. How sad,but at least Carrot's not hurting.

Sorry about Carrot

As Devs mentioned, it is a good idea to have one of the little breeder nets in your cupboard for the day that a baby fish shows up in your main tank. They work wonderfully for keeping the baby separate from hungry mouths, filter intakes, etc.

I spotted a tiny white cloud in my 66 gallon tank a couple of months ago, and popped him in a breeder net for several weeks until he got big enough to manage. He did well, and is not schooling with the adult white clouds

oh my gosh, the horrors of filters. :| ive had bad times with a filter when it sucked up my oranda, im sorry about carrot.

sorry about carrot, what a cute name too

Yes, I love the name, too. RIP, little carrot.

The thing about Carrot is that she was a fry that I bought, not a fry that just happened. More like a toddler-fry. She was doing just fine in with the other fish for a month or so... I thought she was big enough.

Now I'm back down to two fishies... *sigh*

Edit: Here's a pic from when I first got her, next to my juvenile platy Bop.
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