Protecting little guys from the filter?

[AndrewLindsay]

Hey everyone,

Last night, our lettuce sea slug was sucked into the filter and spit back out through the return pump. Needless to say, he didn't survive, and it was a pretty traumatic experience for my wife and I as we were watching the whole time. Is there any sort of grate or mesh that we could put on our filter to prevent the little guys from getting sucked into there?

For reference, we have a JBJ 28-gallon Nanocube.

Also -- does anyone know if lettuce slugs are poisonous? We are worried that he may have released something into the water when he was killed. We think our Banded Coral Shrimp died last night (though we are really, really hoping he just molted), so we are really worried. We already did a 5-gallon water change, and we will do another tonight.

Thank you!
Andrew and Lindsay

 

[Steve]

It has a slime coat that is toxic... Depending on it's size, you may need to run carbon if you are not, and do and another water change in a few days.

 

[bigtoga]

I always struggle with the "Did my banded coral shrimp die or molt?" question too - it's one of those "Give it a few days" things, I guess. I don't know about the toxins but I think it would be pretty logical to just throw some carbon in there for about 3-7 days to make sure there's no lingering effects. Any of your standard "reef carbon" varieties would do the trick so go to the LFS and ask around.

As for the "How to protect?", I don't quite know of how you would actually protect him/her totally. The main problem is likely suction - it's just too much. You could put a smaller, collander-style filter over your existing overflow in the hopes that it would prevent the sea slug from getting sucked through the entire filter system. My fear would be that the sea slug would then get trapped in the new filter and be unable to free himself due to the suction.

I don't know - I'm still kinda new myself. Just trying to help