I recently moved my phantom colony of L128 and L200s to my 65 gal which only houses them. I’m running a fluval 406 / a 40 gal submersible filter / a 60 gal sponge filter as well. It’s a fairly deep sand bed and this tank has been running for a few years now never lost the cycle on it. They have been in this tank for easily a month now but my Hi-fins all now have dark splotches on them as you ll see in photos.
Originally I had them in a 40 breeder with some peacocks cichlid juveniles. They all came in the same order from the same supplier and that tank was a new settup and was the home for them for quarantining when they arrived and they all stayed in this tank for about 2.5 months with no deaths and actually my peacocks began to breed (approximately 4 different breedings occurred).
The ph on the 40 was around 7.4 and never fluctuated from this range. Temps varied as it was winter when I received them which I had a heater on but kept the tank around 77 and eventually as it warmed up I turned the heat off and just let the house heat the tank snd it sits around 75 now.
The 65 gal is the same temp wise but as I know from research about the phantoms they like a lower ph. As I had used crushed coral in the filter to maintain the ph in this tank about 7.6 for the cichlids that were in it I removed it weeks before placing the colony inside and the ph after the water changes I did before placing the colony in and while they were in there sits at about 6.8-7.
So I’m baffled as to what is causing this blotching. They eat repashy super foods. Occasional blood worms/ brine shrimp / krill which I sometimes add into the repashy.
