What the hell just happened?!

[Plec123]

i was sitting at my desk, and i turned to my freshwater tank only to see my angel coughing out blood through his gills! wtf? he was breathing heavily and quickly and blood was coming from his gills for about 12 seconds. first, the blood was coming out quickly, but the flow stopped after like 15 seconds. any ideas on what might have caused this?
this is the first time i have seen anything like this happen.
i should also say that ive got MTS in my tank and the angel has tried to eat them before.

 

[Red Devil]

never heard of this.. how is the angel now?

 

[Plec123]

never heard of this.. how is the angel now?

he looks perfectly fine now.

 

[Red Devil]

he looks perfectly fine now.

wow... i would be interested to know what happened too.

 

[Plec123]

wow... i would be interested to know what happened too.

yeah... i wish i knew so i could keep it from happening again.

 

[Pharaoh]

Never heard of this before

 

[superleggera123]

are you sure it was blood and not food particles?

 

[Plec123]

are you sure it was blood and not food particles?

definitely blood.

 

[~ocean]

odd...

 

[justonemoretank]

I did a quick google search, and found a few folks answering questions on various forums that stated that this is a sign of stress.

In one case, a lady was talking about her sick Oscar, in another, a person was talking about a goldfish with dropsy. So, not exactly conclusive, but I'd go ahead and test water, making sure everything's fine there, so at least that can be ruled out.

The sick oscar sounded like ammonia poisoining, and dropsy is a symptom of poor water quality, as well, and both were accompanied by this bleeding from the gills.

Again, none of this is as concrete or factual as it could be, or necessarily related to what's going on, but it never hurts to test water and also to make sure that the Angel isn't being picked on or anything which could stress it, as well.