Almost lost my cowfish...

[asylumdown]

Yesterday morning I woke up late for brunch with my family so I didn't take a good look at my tank before running out the door. I got a frantic call from my roommate half way through brunch that Ferdinand, my 8"+ long Cowfish was missing.

There aren't many places a fish that size and shape can hide in any aquarium, let alone mine, so I got my roommate to get out the ladder and do a thorough top down inspection.

Somehow, between 1am when the last person to bed looked at the tank and the morning, my cowfish managed to get in to one of my overflows. The inside of the overflows are only barely as long as he is, and half the space is taken up by two 2" pipes. He was completely wedged between the back glass and the emergency drain. They couldn't tell if he was alive or not

I immediately came home, having a mild aneurism remembering all the stories I've read about stressed/dying cowfish releasing Ostracitoxin in large enough quantities to nuke a tank.

My roommate managed to fish him out just before I walked in the door and he was indeed alive. After zooming around the display like a frightened bull released from a pen for a while, he calmed down and started acting normally, he even ate within 20 minutes.

Today he is REALLY banged up. His tail is shredded tatters, his dorsal fin is more accurately described as tattered dorsal spines, and large chunks of skin on his peduncle are missing. I think for a time his tail was actually held out of the water and dried out.

Now, I'm hoping someone here can help me troubleshoot how this happened. He is by far the largest fish in my tank, both in length and mass. He's the least graceful swimmer in the aquarium, and moves slowly enough that I could easily reach in and pick him up any day of the week, My overflows are lined with teeth that rise well over an inch above the water line so for him to have made it in to that box he would have had to get his entire body more than an inch our of the water. I simply did not think that was possible.

The only thing I can think is that since I replaced two of my pumps I hadn't been running a night mode, and was leaving my 4 vortech's on tidal swell mode all night. He struggles a bit for the few minutes when all pumps are all on at 100%, and usually stays right in the middle of the aquarium where the water is calmest when that's happening. Could this have happened when he was 'sleeping' because the current at night was too strong? It still doesn't explain how he managed to get that much air, but it's the only thing I can think of. I've obviously changed to programming, the tank is only on Tidal swell for 5 cumulative hours in the day now, so two complete 'swell' cycles, but broken up by less intense flow programs in between. There's also a max 50% intensity night program now too.