Hi,

About 5 min ago my mom's black moor swallowed a rock the size of his mouth. She has tried to milk it out from the outside and tried tweezers, which just lodged it back in further. He doesn't seem able to get it out himself. Any advice please?
Thx so much

Try gently cupping the fish in your hand and bring to
the surface. Pop the mouth just out of the water, the
mouth should open, allowing you to use a tweezers to
remove the rock. If that doesn't work, try lifting the
fish above the water line and put the mouth into the
water.

There is the off chance that, leaving the fish alone to
work it out happens. But, assisting your fish would be
the best thing to do. Let us know how it goes.

oh man, that sounds horrible! I hope it comes out soon!!!

Thx so much for your advice! Given the loss of my calico a couple days ago and then this, my mom and I have been a little nervous lately about our fishkeeping abilities :-)

He finally looks like he just swallowed it, has been swimming around and eating normally so we've left him alone. He's got quite the appetite! If he starts acting like he is regurgitating it again, we will definitely try your techniques.

We are planning to remove all small gravel now - do you suggest no gravel at all, or replacing with even larger? (This gravel is about 0.5-1 in diameter).

Thx again for the advice - these are the first goldies for both of us.

If you remove the gravel you must do it slowly as the gravel contains tons of beneficial bacteria. What I did was removed 1/8th of the gravel and threw it out initially. Then I put the rest of the gravel in nylon socks or knee highs and left them in the tank. Then I added the new substrate. Every fourth day I would remove one nylon sock. So your only removing small amounts each time and letting the bacteria accummulate on the new substrate. If you remove it all at once you will crash your system.
A good substitute for new substrate is river rocks.