hurt fantailed cichlid

Question
Hi.  I hope you can help.  We have two cichlids (fantailed and albino).  They are about 5 months old and 8 inches long.  We put a pleco in their tank to clean the sides and the albino caught and tried to eat it.  It looked stuck but next thing we knew the fantailed had it in her mouth overnight.  We didn't want to hurt her by removing it.  She finally expelled it and we removed it from the tank, but now her mouth is stuck open.  We took her out to remove anything we saw, but saw nothing.  Now we dont know if she cant breath and keeps her mouth open to get more oxygen, or if it is just stuck like that.  Any ideas??  Also, neither fish wants to eat.  Thanks so much.

Laura

Answer
Hi Laura,
 Hmm... I have never heard of a fantailed cichlid.  Are you sure it is a cichlid?   (I have heard of fantailed goldfish, could that be it?)

 In either case, it sounds like her mouth is stuck like that.  Sometimes fish get the bones in their jaw dislocated.   Un-dislocating them can be tricky and not always successful but it occasionally works.  Here is how it works.  Basically, there are many, many bones that make up the jaw of a fish.  If the jaw gets overextended, such as might have happened in this case, they can get out of line.  The way to get them back in line is to -- very, very gently -- extend the jaw even more and hope that when it pulls back the bones will line up.   To do this, you need to catch the fish in a net and using your fingers pull the jaw out just a little and let it relax and see what happens.  To be honest, this isn't a trivial thing to do but I suggest you give it a try.  

-- Ron
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
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