Tetras

Oops.

A very, very big oops.

I currently have a black widow tetra in one of the other tanks recovering from shock and a nearly fatal little injury.
He got sucked up the filter...got to be the most traumatic thing I have ever had to deal with!! And I've crashed motorbikes!

What happened was this; when getting this new tank ready for fish we took off the little bit on the end of the filter to get the job done a bit quicker and then forgot to put it back on. So when we put the new fish in, this one poor little bugger swam a bit too close to it before we'd realised, got sucked up the tube and promptly got stuck! Turned the filter off pretty quick, but he was not coming back out... Tried blowing through it, tried gently pulling him out, nothing worked. In the end, we connected the part of the filter tube he was stuck in to the filter's outflow tube, and turned the damnded thing on. The water forced him out, but not without him getting quite badly hurt. He sank down to the bottom of the tank and sat there gasping for a good ten minutes. Just as I was thinking we were going to have to give him up for dead, he bobbed up, right as rain and started swimming around with the two other tetras!
So, 4 days later, he's still doing incredibly well, shockingly. He's very bright and alert and eating well. He just has a rather nasty red patch on his head where the filter tube did the damage. To be on the safe side, I have treated the tank with Protozin to prevent any bacterial infections taking hold.

Oh, and fitted the end of the bloody tube properly!!

My other female fighters are in there too now, and that is a tragedy I could not cope with!