And all that remained was its head.

[B Considine]

Picked up a nice "pitbull pleco" Sunday at SCALES. Last night, got home from work to hear an awful racket coming from a Whisper 2. Found the pleco's head jamming the impeller. How it got there, I'll never know. I've had snails get into my filters before, but never a fish.

Meanwhile, an oto that got jammed into my Eheim surface skimmer, seems to have rebounded.

[Aaron]

Doh! I've had ottos get sucked into powerheads before. I use sponges on them now.

[B Considine]

Doh! I've had ottos get sucked into powerheads before. I use sponges on them now.

But that's the thing: it couldn't have gotten sucked up the intake tube--it was larger than the openings. My only guess is that it "climbed" up the intake tube and into the filter.

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

Atleast removing them from the filter is easy. When I kept blue JDs, once they
got large enough, they started 'eating' my ottos. The ottos would lock their
spiny pectoral fins up and get stuck in the JD's mouth - which would then
proceed to swim about with its mouth wide open with an Otto hanging out
of it. The only way to remove the otto was to fish the JD out, hold it steady
with a wet towel, reach into its mouth with a pair of needle nose pliers and snap
the ottos pectoral fins off. Usually the otto was already dead by this point. Usually.

[RTRJR]

Been there, done that. My wildest episode (not involving filter capture) was when my mbu puffer decided that the Pajama Cat was lunch (long-term tank-shares previously, several years). I came home from work, checked the tanks before going upstairs (standard), and found the cat's pectoral girdle - without head or body, resting outside its shallow cave. The big puffer apparently "knew" to avoid, and how to avoid, Synodontis spines.