Fish sick: Apistogramma cacatuoides help!

[arc200uk]

My female Apistogramma cacatuoides (dwarf cockatoo cichlid) is looking awfully pale..She is hiding under a drift wood cave with my 5 corydoras and i can barely see her, but it looks as if she has lost a lot of her markings (using a torch)...She is laying really low to the gravel and she is normally rather nippy towards the corydoras when they get in her way..

Water:

Nitrates: 30
Nitrites: 0
GH: 16 d
KH: 5 d
PH: 7.9

.... That's pretty much the norm for this tank and the pair of my dwarf cockatoo cichlids are perfectly fine most of the time..

My dimensions are 80cm long x 35cm wide x 45cm high..that's 33 US gallons.

55 watts of lighting = 1.6 watts to the gallon

Tank mates:

8 x Nannostomus
4 x Corydoras melini
1 X Corydoras paleatus

Some of you already know that!

Food I feed my fish:

Frozen Bloodworm
Frozen Brine Shrimp

Sinking tablets for Corys
Algae wafers for Corys

I rarely feed some freeze dried tubiflex..

I was stupid on Saturday and introduced another male dwarf cichlid of a different specie into the tank (Apistogramma agassiz), the second I put him in, my male dwarf cockatoo flared his fins and followed him around the tank for a few hours,so i removed him and returned him to the pet shop. My male Apistogramma Cacatuoides has been really territorial ever since..and its now tuesday and he is still swimming up and down the tank, flaring his fins at me whenever I look at the aquarium... He is not happy with me....

I thought that she was just making the area under the driftwood her teritory in the morning, but now I can see that she is not herself, especially now that she is sitting there in a crowd of corys.

Any idea what might be the problem with my female Apistogramma Cacatuoides? It has been sunny lately, would a rise in temperature cause her to be like she has been today? Perhaps the fish I introduced on saturday had some kind of desease? Perhaps the males aggression lately is the cause? The male is fine.. And the female is fine most of the time!

Any help would be appreciated.

[arc200uk]

My male is now losing his colour! On his black stripe across the body, only a spot of black in the middle is showing...help me guys!!!

Pencilfish are fine...they are showing their red colour.

[arc200uk]

Female is now swimming at the surface of the water and is not swimming away from me when i adjust the filter.... male is as pale as the female was yesterday now and i've just noticed the pencilfish going to the top of the water. Water test strip showing same result as yesterday!!! I have to go to work in a few minutes, and im guessing that they will all be dead when i get back.

Edit: Well, im really not sure if my pencil fish were affected or not...They seem fine.

Done a 25% water change....changed 30% yesterday. Female is the same and so is male.... Im assuming that they have got some kind of desease from that cichlid...any opinions would be most helpful!!! Corys are more confident today and seem to think that something is going on... If it is due to that fish, im not shopping at that store anymore as have already suffered from their overbred/incest corys!

[sharn]

im not too up on apistos myself but if your talking degrees could your GH be the prob? 16 is pretty high, i keep my wilds and rams at around 5.

other than that my guess would be that hes bought it something funny, you didnt quarentine him first aye?

good luck and i hope they pull thru

[arc200uk]

Hi Sharn and thanks for the reply.

Didnt quarentine unfortunately...Had seen that lone cichlid in his tank at the shop for a few weeks now, so thought that he was ok. He was the only one they received in their shipment and was in with a tank of flying foxes which they also dont normally stock.

Yeah, the water is far from perfect, but the fish dont seem to mind.

She is still holding on at the top of the tank (not gulping, just at a tilt with her mouth about 1cm away from the surface...I have hope for her. Cant see the male, but im assuming that he is still on the bottom somewhere. I think that the black stripe on the female is coming back..and she has got some black in her pelvic fins now. She still doesnt look good.

When I looked in the tank just now, I saw that the snails had a red dot around their eye/face.. I did introduce another anubias plant on Saturday.

Ah well...time will tell...

[racoll]

I doubt it's the GH that's causing the problem. Tank bred A.cacatuoides are pretty tolerant.

You don't mention what your temperature is. Maybe your heater's stuck on or off?

I found the apistos I kept were quite sucesptible to gill flukes.

See this post...

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... ht=autopsy


I hope they get better.

[arc200uk]

I dont know the temp..the little strip stuck to the tank is actually a bit damaged and it seems to always be stuck on 27 degrees C. This is even when I turn the thermostat off and do water changes.. The heater has been set to 24 degrees C.

Gill flukes seems to make sense; she was sitting at the top of the water just like yours was. It did seem as if she was suffering from a lack of oxygen.

She was dead when I put the light on this morning. Pretty upset about that... The male looks fine now anyway..back to his normal self. He is obviously acting nervous. I'll look into it.

[racoll]

Sorry to hear that she died.

Someone correct me if i'm wrong, but it's my observation that apistos aren't very long lived. Mine lasted 18 months max, and they were full sized when I got them. I notice in your picture that your female looked quite old/large.

First thing I would do now is get a decent thermometer.

If that's OK, I'd then closely monitor the male for three weeks to see how he does. Keep an eye on his gills in particular for heavy breathing.

If he's OK, I would add three females at the same time (very important).

It may be the case that with just one female in the tank, he was bullying her a bit too much when you weren't looking. He needs lots distrations to stop him picking on one at a time.

Provide loads of hiding places such as coconut shells and bogwood.

I hope it goes well.

[arc200uk]

His breathing does seem weird...big gill movements. Am I going to lose him if he also has the gill flukes?

I've heard that aquarium salt is good, but I have corys. How could would a UV sterliser be? I dont really understand how one like this:

http://www.aquariumsuperstore.co.uk/mall/v2vecton.asp

would work...do you need some kind of external filter with tubes to attach it to?

[RiC]

I keep apistos (I even breed them) and yes, they are not long lived but they can make it to 3-5 years in the aquarium (more than in the wild).
I would increase aeration in that tank (airstone) especially if the temp rises. However your levels are fine, that's the temp at which they breed.
Apistos do not tolerate salt.

[racoll]

His breathing does seem weird...big gill movements. Am I going to lose him if he also has the gill flukes?

This could be the affect of high temperatures. Have you got the thermometer yet?

I dont really understand how one like this would work...do you need some kind of external filter with tubes to attach it to?

Yes, you would need to attach the UV to the outlet of an external power filter. I think this would be overkill though, and may not work, as the flukes would have to pass through the UV to be killed.

Don't add any treatments to the tank. These will probably do more harm than good. The flukes can be very difficult to shift, and the necessary high concentration of chemicals is likely to kill a small ill fish such as an apisto.

Gill flukes in small numbers are very common, and are easily tolerated by most fish, so I don't think there is any need at the moment worry too much about the other fish.

There must be reason why the apistos are suceptible. I supect age.

What I would do know is monitor the male carefully. If he is clearly very ill, I would kill him.

I would then monitor the tank for about a month. If there are no problems, I would add 1M and 3F from a different store. Make sure they are all young fish.

If anyone else has had experience with this, please add.

[arc200uk]

Sorry for such a late reply. Didnt get an email notification.

He is still hanging on. He looked skinny last night and had a long poo hanging out. He sure ate a lot of brine shrimp though. I managed a big water change and im going to focus on water changes now. Went on a snail killing spree aswell... Im trying to keep the tank in good shape. After eating his brine shrimp, he was swimming quite fast and kept flicking himself on driftwood.. I feel sorry for the poor guy but dont want to kill him just yet. He must be a lot stronger than his mate.

Got a new thermometer. It was reading 30 degrees c at one point with the hot weather!! Its now about 26 degrees c. Even the corys were fine during the warm weather.

[arc200uk]

Well, I checked on him at my lunch time and he seems a lot better! He has got some colour in him and seemed quite alert. I fed him and my pencilfish some brine shrimp and he was a bit shy, but gulped down a good few. He kept flaring his fins, which is always a good sign.

After I did the water change yesterday, i dosed the tank with interpet liquisil (i dont agree with meds, but wanted to see if it could help). Either that or the water change has done him some good. I was reading the instruction booklet and it sounds as if this medication is a lot weaker than meds like methylene blue and etc.

[arc200uk]

Well, I checked on him at my lunch time and he seems a lot better! He has got some colour in him and seemed quite alert. I fed him and my pencilfish some brine shrimp and he was a bit shy, but gulped down a good few. He kept flaring his fins, which is always a good sign.

After I did the water change yesterday, i dosed the tank with interpet liquisil (i dont agree with meds, but wanted to see if it could help). Either that or the water change has done him some good. I was reading the instruction booklet and it sounds as if this medication is a lot weaker than meds like methylene blue and etc.

Update for Sunday:

He seems better now. Needs fattening up though and needs some females soon...the dominant male pencilfish is building the guts up to push him around.