First jumper :(

[Baddog671]

Walked into my spare bedroom this morning to open the curtains to let in natural light, and boom, my 6" pleco is on the floor! My first thought was to grab him and throw him back in the tank, but soon as I touched him I realized it was too late as he was about as dry and hard as a breakfast wheatie. I flushed him, but that sucks because he was my first fish and my favorite.

Today I was reading some people's experiences about leaving plecos out of water for hours and being able to revive them, so I was kicking myself for at least not trying it. But I'm pretty sure he was a gonner. Coulda been an hour, coulda been 8 hours, hard to say.

It seems i've read about this in other places, and the 'teaching' is that you should always put plecos back in the water when you find them on the floor, because even if they're all dried up and you're certain they must be dead, they may not be.

Something about days without water and burying themselves in mud during dry seasons w/o water??

It's my fault for having an open top tank, but the water level's not near the top at all, and there is a lip, so I thought I would be ok. Suppose I'll need to get one so as to not victimize anything else

 

[Cynic]

Yeah Plecos are absolute tanks, I lost an entire 150G due to a leak and the only survivor was a Pleco.

 

[Laser]

Yeah, it's sad. I had a paradise fish that jumped through a seemingly impossible opening. He was crispy dry when I found him but I put him back in the water anyway. He lived for another 24 hours but I think he died from stress anyway.

 

[BL1ND1ND3X]

Sorry for loss.
Hopefully that doesn't happen again.

 

[Baddog671]

I'm going to buy a Versa glasstop off Amazon for my tank, that should remedy the situation.

I used to hear him splashing at night and it took me awhile to figure out what he was doing (very shy fish). He would swim up the HOB outlet and I guess try to eat stuff off the filter media. Then he'd release and fall back in, causing the splash. But still, I don't see how he got out of the tank. The outlet hangs down in the tank an inch or 2, its not level with the rim. AND I had it centered on the back, not close to the sides

 

[Mebbid]

If its not too late you could take a look at screen door materials to make a top. You can use that along with deer netting to make a very effective lid that doesn't block light, get dirty, and doesn't prevent air exchange.