FISH SURGERY

Tonight I had to do something I never thought I'd do in this life - perform fish surgery.

Disclaimer: No knives were used and no fish were hurt in this procedure... I did have to use a sharp object though. Here is what happened:

While waiting for my son to brush his teeth before going to bed, I sat in front of the Goldies' tank and watched them scavenge for food. They do that by taking a piece of gravel into their mouths, rolling it around to get any food leftovers or algea off and then spitting it out again. It didn't work that well for Pinkie though. I watched as he popped a larger pebble, rolled it around and... Yeah, couldn't spit it out.

He went into distress rather quickly. Tried to spit it out very hard, contorted his mouth, visibly struggled and every now and again he went limp, as if exhausted. Then start struggling again. My son and I watched him for about 5 minutes hoping he'd spit the pebble out but it was becoming obvious he was in serious trouble. The periods of going limp were becoming more frequent.

We had to make a decision and my son had a fantastic idea to try Clove Oil. We use it to gently euthanize seriously sick fish but I know in small doses it acts as anasthetic. We got the cup one of our bettas came in, poured about a cup of aquarium water in and added two drops of clove oil. Then swished for a good measure so the oil dissipated into the water a bit.

Then we put Pinkie in the cup. He calmed down very quickly and within a minute I fished him out, put him on a moist paper towel and, using the tapered (eye) end of a large sawing needle I very gently lifted his gill cover, inserted the needle between his gills and carefully pushed the pebble out his mouth. He did not struggle at all and we immediately put him back in the tank, after adding a few drops of Aquari-Sol and turning the filter off to prevent him from being thrown around by the current.

He was out of it. That's saying it mildly. He was completely stoned but was breathing, though very shallowly, and just floated on his side. We watched with abated breaths. Soon his breathing became deeper and his fins started twitching. Next came the tail and at first jerky movements. He righted himself and within 5 minutes was pretty much back to normal. My son and I shared a big sigh of relief.

Dufus of a fish! I certainly hope he won't do that again.