My fish has a peice of pea wedged in her throat. She's moving her mouth vigorusly; I grabbed her and she got scared and spit out half of the pea which I immediatly removed. I still think it's stuck in their, she's still working with it but it looks too deep for tweezers without hurting her. I tried holding her and moving her back wards, isn't working but will try again. Please help me!

She managed to swallow it; when I went back upstairs after posting, she was acting normally and I couldn't find any chunks of pea strewn about the tank, so I think she gulped it down. Gave them a little amount of bloodworms, all of my fish swallowed the pecies and kept them down, so there dosn't seem to be any obstruction in anyone's throat, and then they decided to go picking among the rocks at the bottom for food. The crisis is over, so someone can move this topic out of the Emergancy section.

Sorry I didn't see this sooner.

Well, truthfully, it sounds like you just saw her eating the way all goldfish do. Especially with a chunk of something. What they do is suck it into their mouths and hold it in the back of their throats. They move their gill flaps in and out becasue there are teeth-like growths on the inside of their gill arches. This enables them to work chunks of things down into smaller bits so that they can swallow them easier. Their lips moving in and out and the rapid gill movements are simply normal chewing movements.

For instance, I have a goldfish that REEEAAAALLLY loves mealworms, especially live ones. Hes a big boy so he can appreciate their size (and yucky juiciness). Anyway, when I feed them to him, he runs around and picks up as much as he can hold in his mouth and sits on the bottom to chew away at them one by one. Sometimes he even gets into it and thrashes his head back and forth like a shark. It's really funny because he has several hanging out of his mouth at one time.

It sounds like all is well though. Good luck with her.

Corker Paul and don't they just love to chew and chew?

I've got a a rather worrying blackmoor who has had 5 pieces of gravel stuck in his mouth/throat over the last 2 weeks so to prevent anymore mishaps (and further near coronaries on my part) - i've had to set up a bare-bottom tank for him. Thank goodness for sharp tweezers and a steady hand (oh and a handy mild salt dip for him and strong vodka for me after each event)

Roano - good news and it can look worrying no?

Yeah, I know what you mean about those darn moors!

Before I switched to a more uniformly small gravel in my black moors tank, I looked in to see mine with 3 peices of gravel wedged into his mouth so that none would come back out. He freaked for about 3-5 minutes swimming around all erratically and then , Just as I was going to reach in there and see what I could do, he smacked his head up against the front panel of galss and all three stones came out!

Needless to say, the very next day, He had his new, small gravel!

Yeah, very scary. I hope I never have to end up pulling food or rocks out of my goldie's mouth with tweezers.

Fayba's doing fine now, just as hungry as the rest! I didn't know how violent they could be when trying to chew their food. I'll just make sure in the future to pull the food apart better first to avoid another scare; at least I don't have to worry about gravel getting stuck in their mouth's, since I upgraded to large rock size!

Are moors really more prone to have problems like that?

Well i guess in my experience - yes I have 4 moors and out of all my fish, they're really the only ones i've had concerns with ie. cloudy eye, fin rot, lice(courtesy of my lfs), sucking on rocks way too big for their mouths but they are adorable

Aren't they, though? I plan on getting one sometime in the future, after I settle issues with my current tank.