Have to give my wife special praise for removing a large marble from my female festae's mouth tonight. Strangest fish crisis I've had to deal with in all of my years of fish keeping. Thought it would be interesting to share here.
So my festae - she is about eight inches - started doing this strange thing the other day where it looked like she was trying to spit something out. I decided to monitor it for a couple of days and see if she could get it out on her own. Tonight, I pulled her out and used some tweezers to inspect the inside of her mouth. She had a marble stuck there that was too large for her to spit out or swallow. (Quick back story - She has always sifted through the sand and gravel on the tank floor, but I forgot there were marbles in there. They got mixed in when a friend gave me some gravel, which included some of these dime-size marbles).
I couldn't get the tweezers to grip onto the marble, so we tried needle-nose pliers, but the marble was so large, it wouldn't come back out easily. My wife then came up with the idea to use duct tape wrapped around the end of the pliers to add adhesion. It worked great and we got it out, finally. The festae, who was surprisingly calm through all of this, is now looking much better and back to swimming around the tank. Meanwhile, we're digging the pearls out as we find them. Strange episode, but it ended well.
So my festae - she is about eight inches - started doing this strange thing the other day where it looked like she was trying to spit something out. I decided to monitor it for a couple of days and see if she could get it out on her own. Tonight, I pulled her out and used some tweezers to inspect the inside of her mouth. She had a marble stuck there that was too large for her to spit out or swallow. (Quick back story - She has always sifted through the sand and gravel on the tank floor, but I forgot there were marbles in there. They got mixed in when a friend gave me some gravel, which included some of these dime-size marbles).
I couldn't get the tweezers to grip onto the marble, so we tried needle-nose pliers, but the marble was so large, it wouldn't come back out easily. My wife then came up with the idea to use duct tape wrapped around the end of the pliers to add adhesion. It worked great and we got it out, finally. The festae, who was surprisingly calm through all of this, is now looking much better and back to swimming around the tank. Meanwhile, we're digging the pearls out as we find them. Strange episode, but it ended well.
