Emergency situation, and word of warning

Today was normal, and I fed my 55 gallon their normal staple of pellets and left them to eat while I took care of the other tanks.

I took a look a few minutes later to see that one of my rainbows looked like he had a tumor in his jaw. Upon closer inspection I realized he had a pellet lodged in his throat. While trying to catch him to attempt to remove it I notice another in the same predicament. Luckily the chasing with the net caused the other one to cough up his pellet. But the other one wasn't able to.

I finally caught the first one, I wasn't able to remove the pellet as it was too far back, but I was able to massage it past his gill line to help with breathing and hopefully speeding up the digestion process.

The word of warning is to adapt the size of your pellets as your fish grow. All my fish have always eaten these pellets as a staple, and they usually pick as them until they've eaten the whole pellet. I hadn't realized they'd gotten to big for these pellets. Lesson learned, and I hope my rainbow makes it.

The pellets I feed:


My rainbows size, compare to the full grown C. aeneus:

 

Why are you feeding the large sized pellets? Omega makes these same pellets in a small size too. The small pellets would be a much better size for your fish. You want to feed your fish pellets they can swallow without having to chew it too much.

 

Or you could cut the pellets in half bit as OP mentioned he learned his lesson

 

It's much easier to buy the right sized pellet than it is to cut pellets in half.

 

True but if you already bought it and can't return it it's best to cut them so that you can avoid compaction

 

I'm a she, ha. And I usually buy pellets large so they are forced to pick at it as I have a few fish that will gorge themselves and leave the others hungry if they're able to swallow their pellets whole.

But I do plan to crush these before feeding until they run out.

 

Oops sorry for got to see your name since I was typing it on the app! But now I'm not. That's a good idea! I use flakes so its a bit simpler since you can have some on the surface and sinking so the tetras have more room to eat and their not all picking at the surface. Any extra food gets eaten by the shrimp or snails. And if you have cories they will eat any of the flakes that sink. The plants and bacteria will also consume any of the fish food left on the floor.

 

I soak mine before I feed em. It works a treat.