Mouth-full - at what point do I help?

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Andyroo

Andyroo

Redtail Catfish
MFK Member
Apr 17, 2011
1,217
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MoBay, Jamaica
www.seascapecarib.com
Lad & Lasses,
So, our girl has decided that the smaller of the ancient angelfish looked tasty - my fault, I found fresh-frozen smelt in the market so she's 'blooded' from squid, bugs & lizards. Unfortunate, a shame & a little shameful on my part... though I was wondering how to re-house the inbred angles with pending refits/redistributions anyways.

Either way, she's been trying to swallow for a erring towards three hours and I can't tell if it's going down or not. Q:
* Will she cut-bait & barf it out?
* At what point do I net her to pluck it out by fingers? Does this risk further damage, possibly to gils (which seem safe, though a little distended)

It's head-first, upright (dead) currently, so it's oriented well for swallowing, but maybe not for barfing/plucking. However, with that heavy diamond shape i doubt there's enough in the gullet to be seeing partial/point digestion. Not seeing tongue-grinding, but that might be happening; seems to be offset to the right of the mouth, parallel & maybe misaligned to the tongue/pallet. As said, not impacting gills though jowl & gullet/throat is extended - as usual for swallowing larger stuff, but maybe not adequate for this.
 
It would be difficult to barf out because the dorsal spines won't let it. Take a picture and show us.

My 11.5" pbass decide to try it with a 4" severum, (after year) but I could tell it bit off more than it could swallow since the mouth was near its maximum width open. The severum was sideways. I netted my pbass out, and used kitchen shears to cut the dorsal spines of the severum carefully. I then had to slowly open the pbass mouth wider and slowly pull out the severum (less than 1/4 inch at a time), rotating to see which position it would move out. The more that it came out, the more I could cut the severum's dorsal spine. It took close to 5 minutes to finally get it out.
 
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Thanks Rockstar ( Rocksor Rocksor ).
She seems to be shifting it... slowly. It's around bottom-first & down, grinding it as it goes. I'm observing for fins/parts getting into the gills, bud so far she seems to have control. The uppermost fin (can't tell if dorsal or anal) has now fallen out of the pallet groove to the side, but she doesn't seem to be in distress... until the camera comes out... princess.
If I do have to perform "surgery" I expect the kitchen sheers will be able to halve the angel in place, then both should go down (or come up). My worry would be injury in netting & then gill injury in removal & twitching/flailing. If so, at what point does one pull that trigger?

Fingers crossed she'll just get it down, and I'll make sure she doesn't get hungry until she's in her new digs.

IMG_3702.jpg

IMG_3700.jpg
 
That doesn't look as bad as with my pbass, which looked 3x times more open and it was in really bad distress. Just leave it alone, it will go down.
 
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