rope fish

i recently purchased a rope fish


do i need to worry about it going into my canister filter or my internal filter or do they only do it on rare occasions?

also do will my cichlids eat him? the rope fish is about a foot long and my cichlids are only like three inches long... they are in a 90 gallon tank

Most Cichlids get fairly large and aggressive. An exception is the German blue ram. The rope fish is active at night and prefers a heavily planted aquarium with plenty of places to hide. They also need live food and can live in brackish water. Cichlids usually like to dig, so they're not much fun in a heavily planted tank. The rope fish should probably get his own aquarium.

I almost forgot. You can put some nylon mesh over the filter uptake.