he opened his mouth and i saw old pellets and an old cricket still in his mouth from a day ago. can swollen gills stop him from being able to swallow? is there anything that can be done? all water levels are good. still dealing with some ammonia issues being between .25 and .50 so i am doing the 25% water change as per the "cycling" instructions on this website. please give suggestions. thanks!

below is picture of nemo's swollen gills. his gills come out all the way when he breathes but he is not breathing heavy. they just look really, really swollen. i can say though nemo was always a fat O compared to his brother.

i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/wildaorti...moswollengills-1.jpg

you can't force him to swallow it.

Until your tank is fully cycled, you can run into all kinds of problems. All I can tell you is to keep going with the water changes.

Good Luck

thanks. do you know if having food in his mouth for a long period of time can cause infections? can the food rot in there? thanks again!

if you are sure that there are some unconsumed foods inside the mouth,
your fish is doomed...but i won't recommend check it out...it will stress
your unstable fish and could aggravate the situation. just keep an eye and
observed any development

i agree the worst thing u can do is try and investigate.

just keep doing water changes, that will give it the ebst chance and cross yr fingers

sorry

The rest got you covered.
Most likely the change in environment and the prolongued exposure to toxins are still effecting your fish.

I will move it if no one else will . Please try and post in the correct forum

no offense but, ive never had a problem cycling my tanks.... i was doing it before i ever learned about what it was to "cycle". i think your missing something.... i think that if you lose your fish you should start from square one... im sorry your having these problem but it seems to me that your missing somthing somwere... like there was this thread a while back, this guy was having ammonia problems really bad... he kept changing water and all that... then he figured out that his under gravel filter had a ton of poo trapped under it... it cleaned it out and BAM! good as new.. take a step back and deep breath and think outside the box...

If there is food still in your oscar mouth after a day then i would say the food is stuck. It wont be the pellets as they turn to mush after they get wet so it can only be the cricket. If it was a whole cricket then you could be in big trouble as the shell wont dissolve quickly. I am going to disagree with the others and say you have no choice but to remove the cricket. I recently had a silver shark that had a freeze dried shrimp stuck in it mouth for a day.

Here is what you have to do. Get a large cloth and get it damp and lay it on a flat area like a table or kitchen worktop. Get some various sizes of tweezers/pliers depending on the size of your fish. Net the fish and lay it on the damp cloth and then cover it with another damp cloth except for the mouth and hold the fish. Then you have to get the tweezers/pliers and get hold of the cricket and pull it out. You have to be very careful doing this so do things gently because you dont want to injure the oscar. If you havent got the cricket out after 2 minutes put the oscar back into the tank for a few minutes and then repeat. The difficult thing is you have to work fast but also to be careful not to injure the fish. It would be good if you can get someone to help you.

You can wait a couple of days if you want to see if the oscar can get rid of the cricket

wow, thank you all so much for all your input. I am so happy to say that after placing two heaters in my tank, my O has taken a liking to it. He is acting normal, opened his mouth for the first time in a few days, is more active and when he finally opened his mouth, the cricket and pellet were gone. woohoo. i did take a really close look at him and along with the ich that i see, i did spot "hole in the head" on both my O's. i am doing all i can and i know they will be okay. thank you all again!

keeping your water in pristine condition will heal most common sicknesses in Oscars.
Your getting there.
Hope things settle down a bit soon...

I am real pleased the cricket is gone, its very stressful for the fish (and the fish keeper) to remove stuck food

As noddy said keep your water good and the HITH will heal up