Minnow mouth stuck open

[JamieS]

Hi,

Last night I noticed that one of our gold cloud mountain minnows had a piece of moss sticking out from it's mouth and it's mouth was wide open. He seemed ok otherwise so I thought it best to leave him and see if he would get it out, but this morning it was still there. He also seemed a bit off this morning - quite lethargic and a couple of the other minnows seemed to be picking on him. I found a couple of other threads on similar subjects and managed to get him in a net and get the moss out. I also put him in a separate tank and added some stress coat as I can imagine it was a bit of a harrowing experience for the wee guy.

The problem now is that his mouth seems to be stuck open and he's very still, just sitting in the one place and not doing very much. I've had a good look to see if there's anything else stuck in his mouth through the glass but I can't see anything in there. Has anyone come across anything like this before? Some of the other threads suggested trying to close the fish's mouth in the hope that that would correct a locked jaw, but that seems like it would be painful and pretty difficult on such a small fish. This has never happened before - was moss a bad decision? I tried to get a good picture but it was pretty hard to do.

Any suggestions very gratefully appreciated!
Jamie

 

[King Fisher]

He might still have some stuck further down. I've seen fish choke on food before and it's very similar.

Also, I think stress coat is for a fish's slime coat. Idk what it would do, if anything, for actual stress.

 

[JamieS]

Thanks for the reply. I'm sure the bottle of stress coat says something about helping to reduce stress, but I may be wrong. In that case I probably haven't helped him much help at all... Is there anything else I can do? I hate to see him looking so miserable and I can't imagine it will end well if I can't help him.

 

[King Fisher]

Honestly, I'm not sure how much you can actually do.

As a last ditch effort I'd probably take him out of the tank and look down his throat with a flashlight and see if he has anything further down in his throat. You could also try to manually close his mouth and see if it works.

 

[Fresh2o]

I have a Forktail Rainbow that has its mouth permanently open as well, though slightly less than in the pic. However, it has not impeded swimming and eating and its behavior has not changed. This has been going on at least 3 months.