Emergengy

[Crashed]

My Silver Shark (Bala) 5 inch in lenght
has decided to eat a small plec 1.5 inch
the plec is now dead & stuck in the silver sharks mouth
in a nutshell i'm not sure if i should catch the silver shark
& try to remove the very stiff plec from the sharks mouth
or let nature take it's turn..

I don't wan't to cause to much panick in the tank, as catching the shark is not easy & could cause more problems, also removing the fish i have a feeling the plecs tail will just break off leaving the head/body still in the sharks mouth..

 

[William]

"let nature take its course".

If you do this the silver shark will die for sure. The only thing you can try is to remove the pleco from the silversharks mouth, that the tricky bit as you probably realised.

Its not just a case of pulling the pleco out either I'm sure, its spines are probably locked into the inside of the sharks mouth. Therefore the silver shark will most likely die as well.

The only thing you can try is gently trying to squeeze it out although this will probably do further damage and pain to the shark. Whilst its hard to know what to suggest without actually seing the severity. If possible I would assume you could use a sharp pair of scissors and literally cut the pleco up, gruesome I know but it would remove the pleco from the sd's mouth once the pleco has been cut you can probably use tweezes, pull down to get the spines out from the upper mouth and up to get out from the bottom, obviously you may also be able to tell the directions ie back and forth when easing the plecos remains out. Things don't look to good but if done right the shark could well survive. On the other hand if it looks to severe it may just be worht your while euthanasing the shark to put it out of its misery. I'm moving this to tropical emergencies.. Good luck!

 

[Crashed]

I managed to pull the plec out of the silver sharks mouth
i was very careful & steady (little shaky) with the silver shark,
being careful not to further damage the fishes eyes while holding etc.

It's got to have hurt the fish, be like pulling a cactus out our throat,
but in a way after the death or death situation, the fish came over & hung around looking at me as if its a kinda big thanks for a pulling that thing from my chops.

Not sure how it got there in the first place, as I only noticed when I
put the light on, I'm not sure if it's best to move the other plecs
incase it happens again, but after 5 years this is the first time this has
happened, the plecs where due to be passed on to the local fish shop
after christmas.

The next few days will see how the silver shark will do, the s/s has a
mission for danger in the past, it has jumped out of the tank & landed behind the RIO 180 tank, getting the fish from behind the tank was very tricky & hard (very dusty) resulting in the fish loosing a few scales and looking dull for a few days, it went on to a full recovery another time
it almost landed in my coffee.

Thanks for your quick answer, I could not let the fish suffer any more
than what it has done for many hours while i decided on what to do,
not the situations i like to be in...

 

[cichlidmaster]

WELL DONE Crashed.....and you too William!!!!!!

CM

 

[William]

Wow excellent I am so happy to hear it worked out for you crashed its a situation I am not at all envious of!! Incidently plecos seem to be able to get into little scrapes and get trapped, I think its because they are so inquisitive.

A few months ago a comparitivly similar thing happened to me, applesnails have a trap door on the base of their shell which they close when they get scared... anyway mr pleco was hoovering around the tank and must have decided to cleanthe bottom of an applesnails shell, I looked at the tank briefly in the morning before school saw nothing amiss and went off then came back in the afternoon, saw pleco and snail were in a remarkably similar position... I moved my hand into the tank and realised that pleco's nose was trapped inside the snail, while both were still alive it was only a matter of time before one of them died. While I like applesnails I really like my pleco too and wanted both to survive what seemed to me the impossible, to cut a long story short i was able to gently ease his snout out of the snail, his nose was all red and the snail didn't come out of its shell for 2 days... however two years on they are both doing well, the snail is in its own seperate tank now but the plecos nose healed up nicely after a couple of weeks. In the months before I removed the snails I noticed that the pleco didn't once try to clean the algae of their shells in fact he tended to avoid them

Glad it all worked out for you too, are the plecos in there bigger than the one which got trapped... I imagine your silver shark will have learnt a pretty dangerous lesson and it won't happen again, perhaps put in some antibacterial stuff to prevent an infection in his wounds if they look serious.

 

[Crashed]

The silver shark's mouth has gone back to normal, it was very swollen before, only slight dullness in colour, it's swimming around doing very well.

A happy result all round...

The small plecs like to explore, they go inside the filter etc, the missus thinks the plec was guilty & jumped in the sharks mouth overnight.

 

[i love cichlids]

I had that happen with my Oscar when i fed it a danio (the oscar was small then) I worried myself sick until he eventually consumed the whole thing. So maybe that might happen?
I hope it Does!!!!!!!