EMERGENCY FISH OPERATION: Venting A Swim Bladder

RMS18 · Jul 29, 2016

Editor’s Note: In the saltwater aquarium hobby, there are many challenges ranging from day to day tasks of maintaining a stable ecosystem to the more difficult issues that can arise due to disease or other problems in the reef. However, some of the rarest issues are those which require something like what you will be reading about below. Few of us have had the situation arise in which we have to do anything like operating surgically on a fish, and this task isn’t for the faint of...

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bruleyii · Jul 29, 2016

Cool stuff. Glad hes doing better.

Btreefing · Jun 5, 2022

Is the fish still doing good? Im about ready to do this to my Anthias

Jay Hemdal · Jun 6, 2022

A word of caution here: this is only likely to work on a primary inflation issue caused by barotrauma. Over inflation caused by secondary bacterial infections, or issues with the swim bladder gas production system will always re-inflate after surgery such as this.

Also, skip the surface prep with iodine - that will cause more harm than good, disrupting/burning a lot of adjacent skin..

Jay