My fish has lockjaw

[hudson2212]

I have a zebra damsel that I have had for about 16 months now. A couple of nights ago I noticed that he cannot close his mouth. There does not seem to be a lot of swelling, but it is a somewhat red in the area around his 'lips'. He has not dropped any weight yet, but I am afraid he is done for if I cannot determine what he has and treat it.

 

Any ideas? He is in my 125G and I have found it pretty much impossible to catch him without removing rock. If this is something that may spread to the rest of the tank I will go that route, but I would rather not disturb everything. I have tried surfing a few fish disease posts but I cannot find anything that matches up to what I am seeing.

 

Thanks.

[chrisstankevitz]

I once had a freshwater fish with "lockjaw" after he tried to eat another fish (too big to eat) and it got stuck in his mouth. I pulled the smaller fish out of the mouth and the mouth stayed locked open for a day, but then back to normal.

[CGNano]

It may go back to normal after a while... it certainly doesn't sound like a disease.

 

Watch him/her very closely over the next couple of days and if it persists, quarantine.

[hudson2212]

Hopefully he snaps out of it. It has been three days since I noticed it, but I cannot catch him to get him over to QT.

 

My biggest concern was that he had some kind of weird fish tetanus.