ANYONE SEEN THIS BEFORE.

[Tyler_Wentworth_150]

I went through this with my big male jag last year. His girl did it to him. Had to euthanize. Sorry for your loss. I was heartbroken seeing your pictures.

 

[Alexxxxsv14]

Very unfortunate
Looks like a beautiful fish

 

[mattison187]

Sorry to hear about your fish. On another note though, rapps emailed me the other day about an f1 male he has that recently killed its female. Possibly something you may be interested in.

 

[MP_cichlid]

I can offer my condolences man, beautiful fish. Such a shame, you have a great collection, I sadly don't think there is much you can do at this point.....

 

[robham777]

Found my 14" dovii dead Dec 21st from a very similar injury. No other damage to the fish.

 

[NW Cichlid Keith]

Found my 14" dovii dead Dec 21st from a very similar injury. No other damage to the fish.

Sorry - Anyone in his tank that could have contributed to this problem - or self inflicted?

 

[Grinch]

Looks to me like a complete disarticulation of the pharyngeal "basket" ... probably between basibranchial bones. In the figure from wikipedia below, the basibranchial bones are along the mid-line between the hyoid and the big triangular bone on the right (the lower pharyngeal bone).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Toothed_Oral_and_Pharyngeal_Jaws_(crop2).tiff

I've heard tales of injuries like this when cichlids fight. It could be that there was past damage that caused a incomplete disarticulation that sudden became complete.