Can Fish Choke on Food?

[tslawinski]

An observation from last night which made me think. I was feeding the tank with frozen PE Mysis shrimp. My 2 1/2 inch spotted mandarine decided he would try one. He chomped on a large whole mysis. It took about 2 min. for him to completely swallow the shrimp. With such a small fish ingesting a large piece of food it made me wonder if fish can choke on food. Any ideas?

 

[Desolas]

Yes they can. They can choke on other things as well. I've had to rescue a fish with gravel stuck in it's mouth before. Your mandarin would probably spit the food out before it choked on it, fish with smaller mouths have a harder time choking IMO. Its the larger mouthed fish that go and consume something that's physically too large for their stomach, but no their mouth that causes the most problem. Anglers especially. They will either choke on the food, or it will rot before it can be processed by the fish.

 

[TonyMc]

When I was younger a friend of mine had a pirahna(sp?) and we fed it a piece of hamburger and it choked to death

 

[blennyluv]

i have a friend that had a big goldfish, choked on a bottom feeding cory cat. i always knew goldfish were stupid!

 

[Alice]

I used to work part time at SeaHorse in Portland. I was unpacking a fish shipment and put a good sized wrasse in a tank with a dwarf lion. I knew that lion wasn't going to try and eat that wrasse because the wrasse was at least an inch longer than the lion.

Well, live and learn....the lion spent the rest of the day with about an inch of wrasse sticking out of his mouth!

 

[Terry B]

I have seen anglers swallow food that was too large and they can die from it. The food literally spoils in their stomach before they can digest it.

Terry B

 

[FishyinKy]

We had to pull a fish out of a lionfish's mouth. Talk about a tricky operation. But we did it because lionfish too will choke to death, big piggy's.