broken jaw

[dozer]

Thanks for all the advice...My tanks are doing wonderfully now. My problem was overfeeding. I now keep them slightly hungry and now everybody is happy. I recently went on a week vacation, and had a friend of mine looked after my tanks. I showed her how much to feed them, but my fish were nice and chubby when I got home...Did an immediate water change, but it appears as if one of my cherry barbs has a broken jaw...He cannot eat. Is this a common thing, or is this the result of some kind of disease? My other cherry barbs, happily pick around at the bottom of the tank and he just hangs there. I have a 10 gallon tank with 6 neons and 3 cherry barbs.

 

[Devilishturtles]

Lock jaw is a rather uncommon disease...but I've had it strike and kill all 3 of my rainbow fish. (Well, one is suffering from it now...I plan on euthanizing soon).

Unfortanently, there isn't much of anything you can do to treat it. It's not caused by an illness or bacteria...it justs happens. Sorry.

 

[dozer]

You nailed it on the head...Within hours of separating him from the rest, he died...very strange thing indeed! Thanks anyways.

 

[Devilishturtles]

Sorry to hear that he died. Usually the fish succumb to starvation because they cannot eat. It also would be laboring breathing I'm assuming, too.

 

[dozer]

yes he did have laboured breathing too...Too bad...he was so pretty.

 

[Devilishturtles]

I just lost mine too. I feel for ya.

 

[dozer]

sorry to hear that!!! ....Well that's another disease I can put in my 'experience' book...So far I've battled ich, fungus, dropsy and now lockjaw...I'm sure there will be more in the future, although it's been a while since I lost one, now that I have the feeding and cleaning down to a science.... My pH is a little high..comes out of the tap that way...but they seem to be ok with it, so I'm not going to mess with it. I try to keep it about 8-8.2.

 

[Jchillin]

Criptos, for what it's worth, it seems that the lock-jaw phenomena although rare, affects cyprinids more often than any other fish. I had it happen to one of my original pairs of bala sharks and had no idea what caused it.

Also, sorry to hear about your loss.