Showa with mouth stuck open, help please

[tancho boy]

Hi all,

As above, I have looked in her mouth and gills but cannot find anything which would be causing this. As a matter of course I have scraped her and found no parasites. She now has dropsy (no fluid, so just 'normal' dropsy) which I think is secondary to the main issue of not being able to close her mouth and thus she is not being able to get the correct pressure of water across her gills. In the height of the recent heat, she did air ramp in front of the water return to try and alleviate her woes, all sad to see. All other fish are fine.

So, I am at the stage where she is deteriorating due to dropsy and just cannot breath properly as she can't shut her mouth. What I would like to do now and what I feel is the only way forward, is to try and gently manipulate the mouth to see if I can correct this lockjaw. It does seem to be the upper jaw which is the culprit and from the skeletal picture on p26, I presume the mouth there is predominantly cartilage and muscle and hopefully this means there is a chance?

The major issue I am facing is that if she has broken her jaw and she can't close her mouth, then she is only going to suffer and so I want to arm myself with as much info as possible before I try to manipulate and maybe take a more sad path if unsuccessful.

Have you any advice please, perhaps on which ways to gently push/pull etc. I know it is not easy to describe this but any starting point other than commonsense (hopefully still have some) is only going to aid my knowledge. Before doing any manipulation, I shall once more have a real good look down her throat and in the gills (once saw blanket weed trapped there) to see if an easier and more obvious (please!) reason can be found.

Hope you guys can help.

Cheers
Mark

[Duncan]

hi mark

first the upper jaw does not move, only the lip moves in and out, its the lower jaw that does all the work

its not a bad idea idea to manipulate the jaw but the fact that the fish has dropsy now suggests that the problem is bacterial and may need antibiotics to correct as well as salt to 1oz per gall to reduce the dropsy

dunc

[Duncan]

this article wrote and thread i started might be of help http://www.koiquest.co.uk/forum/viewtop ... 29&t=11567

dunc

[tancho boy]

Many thanks for the reply Duncan.

I had seen your in depth article and shall re-read it several times more before feeling my way with her mouth. I hear what you say about AB and salt, already onto that.

One question though regarding the lip, is there anything I should be aware of here, can the lip cause such problems, i.e. get stuck? It isn't completely extended such as when koi 'yawn' but is permanantly pronounced, about half way to max. I would say - is this cartillage and muscle at work and could this be 'locked' somehow? Failing that, I take it I am indeed in the area of bottom jaw manipulation?

Thanks again.
Mark