My axolotl ate a fish...

Hi,
We got an axolotl about 5 months ago, and everything's been great, however...

In order to help keep her tank clean, my fiance bought some cleaning fish. He thought they were big enough that she wouldn't be interested, but the next morning I discovered she had eaten one. It seems to be stuck in her throat. She's still very active, and behaves normal, but she can't eat anything with that fish in the way. We're not sure if we should just let it be, and see if she can swallow it and digest in naturally, or if we should try to gently remove it... It's been a few days now...
Any suggestions?

You can never ever ever ever put "cleaning" fish in with your Axolotls. Fish sold as cleaners all have sucker mouths and sharp spines (pleco cats, algae eaters, cory cats, banjo cat actually any catfish at all!!) and WILL attack your axolotl outright or kill your axolotl if they are swallowed. You will either have to take it to a vet that is willing to try to remove it and pay 50 dollars or more to have it done or try to remove it yourself. You will need a small pair of sissors and tweezers. You will need to frig (place your axie in a plastic container for a few hours to slow your axie down. You then will have to place it on a wet towl and have someone hold its mouth open while you try to cut through the 3 fish fins that at holding it in. Two on the side and 1 on the top of the fish. I would not keep it out of the water for more than 2 minutes at a time. Then you just have to hope that an infection from the spines being left behind does not take hold. You CANNOT just try to pull out the fish. You will tear your Axies throat killing it. GOOD LUCK

It's been a learning process. I actually only found this site yesterday.
We had two catfish-like fish in there for months and had no problems whatsoever. The issue was that the store misinformed us about how big they would get, so we had to take them out and return them. Obviously, now we know that the fish are a problem.
We don't really have any good way to transport her to a vet, so we tried to pull some of the spines out. We managed to get them, but the fish is still there. Will it eventually just pass to her stomach?

if you got the spines out you should be able to rotate the fish out - - that is a big meal of a now decomposing fish - I wouldn't want my axie eating it

That's what I was thinking, although it would be pretty stressful to have to get her out of the tank again and go through the whole procedure of trying to pull the fish out...
Thanks for all the help so far!

We managed to pull the fish out. Thanks for the suggestions, especially the rotating advice. That really helped. She even ate a little bit of food, so we're hoping she's ok. We'll keep a close eye on her for a little while.

That's great news! :happy: Glad she'll be ok now.