Swollen Mouth Or Broken Jaw On My Blue Skeleton-Pattern Koi? (Photos)

[BlueSkeleton]

UPDATE: Unfortunately the fish died today (Sunday Aug 14th)

We have a pond that is approximately 8 x 16 feet, about 4 feet deep. It was professionally installed by a company who does garden ponds. The pond has been very healthy for our 50 goldfish for the last 5 years. Every winter it is amazing how the pond freezes over and the fish hibernate (we do keep a heater so it doesnt freeze solid) and every spring they come back out unharmed.

It has a waterfall and a heavy duty filter and pump.

However we just added 2 Koi to the pond about 3 weeks ago. I think they are koi but I'm not sure. A blue one that has a skeleton-pattern and an orange/white one. They seemed to do well and had no problems with the other fish. It's the first time we've ever added a different fish to our pond than goldfish.

Suddenly 5 days ago I noticed the blue skeleton Koi (our FAVORITE fish out of all 50 of them), has something very wrong with his mouth.

His mouth looks swollen inside like his cheeks have puffed up and it's nearly blocking his throat. A few days ago his throat was about the size of 3 toothpicks, then it was the size of 1 toothpick, now it looks like his throat is swollen shut.

Despite this, he continues to swim very actively. He actually swims fast sometimes lately. He is always joining the others to eat, but it is heartbreaking to watch now because of his mouth being "stuck open", he can hardly get any suction. He tries but fails to take the fish flakes from the surface of the water. He eats the flakes that sink. He seems as hungry as any other fish we have.

What can we do? Is this fish going to die for sure? His body looks normal and his gills seem normal too. It is all about the inside of his mouth and lower jaw. It almost looks broken to me? But I don't know much about fish.

I wish I knew how this could have happened. We dont have trees near our pond and no fish has ever suffered body damage before in 5 years. We only got him 3 weeks ago but I am pretty sure I would have noticed if this was wrong all along, because we were so excited to have a new fish and watched him very closely.

These photos were taken today. (Day 5 since we noticed his mouth is swollen).

Here he is in the pond with the other fish:

Here he is today trying to eat a fish flake:

It breaks my heart to look at this photo. He has these 2 weird pink parts on both sides of his mouth. What is that? They stick out a little bit, you can see them from above when he is just swimming.

The white parts at the bottom look like maybe a broken jaw bone? Or what is that? They seem crooked like they are sticking out.

Again, the first thing we noticed was that the inside of his mouth was so swollen. He cant shut his mouth. Nobody handles the fish but we did go on vacation and ask a neighbor kid to feed the fish. I guess it's possible they did something bad since the fish was OK before and messed up afterwards? I'm not ready to accuse anyone though.

Here's his buddy we bought at the same time as the sick blue one. His mouth is perfectly fine.

Thank you so much for any advice. I have never had a fish go sick before in 5 years of having this pond. Our fish have been amazingly hardy.

 

[lilfishie]

to me it looks like his bottom jaw has been pulled off, those pink bits look like the remains of his lower mouth

He is a beautiful fish, is there anyway you could issolate him?

 

[sarah40011]

looks like he's been 'fished' and his mouth has come off. poor him! is he able to get food? might he adapt? i'd have a word with the child to see if he 'noticed' anything up with your fish. you can pretty much tell by kids faces whether they did anything

 

[BlueSkeleton]

Come to think of it, when we returned from vacation (1.5 weeks ago) I did notice the blue fish was hiding a LOT the first 2-3 days. I actually thought he was missing altogether because I just could not find him anywhere. And normally he is easy to spot from a great distance.

Then he reappeared and seemed to be acting normal and like I said, he is swimming completely normal and active now. He is not hiding any longer.

He tries to eat the flake food but can only eat small pieces that sink. He does eat them however. He has just enough suction to barely eat the small flakes but not enough to pull them off the surface.

After reading your replies I am beginning to agree it seems like his lower mouth has been torn off somehow. I can't imagine how this happened. The worst thing that ever happened to our pond was a few years ago, what we believe to be a Blue Heron bird that ate about 6 of our largest fish one day (next to the pond, we found wet footprints like a bird after the fish disappeared).

I suppose it's possible a bird tried to eat our blue fish but I doubt it would only pull at his lower jaw... When our other fish were bird attacked years ago, several fish had obvious puncture wounds and it was pretty easy to tell a bird had tried to eat them.

 

[sarah40011]

hes done really well to heal himself if thats the case!

 

[lilfishie]

how is he today ?

 

[colleen0309]

It sure does look like his lower jaw is ripped off. Did the neighbor boy maybe go fishing in your pond not realizing he could injure the fish? Or maybe a raccoon got into the pond? Hopefully it will heal well enough so he can eat better. So sorry he's not doing well.

 

[-Craig-]

I would not think it was a raccoon, I keep pond fish and a raccoon killed two of my fish, I don't think it would rip the lower jaw off without killing the fish, I think your neighbours boy went fishing in there and could not get the hook out of his mouth so he pulled it off.

when I went deep sea fishing the people fishing next to me ripped the fishes lower jaw completely of because the hook was stuck, if hes got this fare he has a big chance of adapting.

 

[colleen0309]

I said raccoon because we have a family of them living behind our ponds. An adult racoon would definately kill the fish, but a youngster may have gotten it and played with it. My bet is on the neighbor boy fishing!

 

[BlueSkeleton]

The neighbor kid who fed the fish is a girl. I really cant imagine a girl fishing our pond and tearing a hook out of his mouth. But anything is possible, maybe she invited a boy friend along who caused mischief.

Are several of you in agreement that this seems strongly suspicious of a "fishing attack"? We are in a nice neighborhood and we've never been vandalized or robbed or anything like that at all in 20 years. We don't even have any rude neighbors. Is there any way my fish could have just harmed himself or got stuck on a rock and ripped his jaw off, or is that totally unlikely?

how is he today ?

He is doing well. He is swimming well and acting mostly normal.

I've been keeping an eye on him and sometimes he will hide and completely disappear, even when all the other fish are going to eat. We have a cave so if he is hiding down in there, he might not know there is food. But sometimes I will spot him hiding underneath a lily pad, swimming very still near the surface. Just barely moving his fins to keep in 1 place. The times I've seen him do that, I started fearing he would begin to float and that he would die.

But instead, he will "wake up" and start swimming very fast and actively.

Today I just fed them and he is as active as any fish. He can't eat food at the surface or at the bottom and he seems kind of "dumb" about passing up food he could probably eat, and going for food he isn't able to eat.

The good news is I definitely see him eat some food every time.

I guess time will tell but so far he seems like he may adapt and make it. Can his lower jaw actually regrow back to normal, or is that impossible?

As for the raccoons - we have witnessed them in our backyard and have seen evidence of them being at the pond (hair/fur sticking to our humming bird feeder that got knocked over one night). Strangely, we have never had them attack our fish as far as we know. It has been a concern because it would be so easy for them to just eat the fish but I dont think they ever have.

And I agree, if a raccoons attacked the fish, I just cant imagine it only harming the lower jaw of my blue fish.

 

[colleen0309]

The only other thing I can think of that would cause that much damage is fighting. I've never kept koi so I don't know much about their behavior. But I do know cichlids lip lock and roll when they fight. I've seen this happen with some of my angelfish, convicts,and firemouths. It really does look like a fishing injury but since you trust the neighbor, it probably isn't the case. A baby racoon could have pulled the fish from the water, but was too young to finish the job and the fish flopped back into the water. I'm afraid there is no way to tell.

 

[sarah40011]

im sure youre neighbours are good people but sometimes kids do silly things because they dont think of the outcome, not through malice. without proof or even a hint it could possibly cause more trouble than its worth. i still think i'd ask in passing if the girl noticed anything was up with the fish, but yeah you cant really accuse anyone. maybe next time you go away install pond cctv lol

 

[Blubble37]

as an awnser to one of your questions the pink sticky out bits on your carp are barbels, they are like whiskers on some catfish species. I hope he gets better but the jaw will not grow back i'm afraid. it is possible to mend broken bones but not possible to make a new one

 

[mark4785]

The only other thing I can think of that would cause that much damage is fighting. I've never kept koi so I don't know much about their behavior. But I do know cichlids lip lock and roll when they fight. I've seen this happen with some of my angelfish, convicts,and firemouths. It really does look like a fishing injury but since you trust the neighbor, it probably isn't the case. A baby racoon could have pulled the fish from the water, but was too young to finish the job and the fish flopped back into the water. I'm afraid there is no way to tell.

Koi do not antagonise each other at all; they demonstrate the complete opposite behaviour of cichlids. The only way in which another Koi or goldfish could have caused the mouth of another Koi to end up in this state is during breeding behaviour which may involve two fish rubbing against each other. I once introduced a sparkly 'orenji' coloured koi to my pond and, for whatever reason, the green tench that we have started following it's every move around the entire pond; the whole time it head was causing friction against it's body which in turn aggravated the skin and caused severe ulcers and reddening; it did not quite lose the actual tissue fortunately.

To treat the koi with the missing lower lip, I recommend purchasing an NT labs 'paramedic kit' which includes a product which cleans the wound and a product which seals the wound to prevent bacterial infection from taking hold. You do not want to have to deal with a bacterial infection in a wound of that nature as it will quickly kill the koi.

Providing the wound is or becomes fully healed, the fish should have no problem continuing to feed on flake.

 

[BlueSkeleton]

Bad news.

Yesterday he began acting differently. He was hiding a lot. But when the fish were feeding, he came and swam around the food.

However this time he did not attempt to eat any food at all. Just slowly swam through the feeding fish.

The rest of the day I saw him moving very slowly, and I could tell his health was taking a turn for the worse.

Today I found him - sunk at the bottom of the pond, dead.

We netted him out and got a good look. I could see just how much of his mouth was actually missing compared to the top. It was a lot. Poor guy!

I doubt we will ever know what happened to him, but it must have been a major incident to cause him to lose so much of his mouth.

It sucks that out of 50 fish, this was our favorite, biggest and most unique and colorful fish.

Thank you all for your help nevertheless.