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What causes lima shovelnose to "shed" their skin? Stress, bad diet? Or is this a good sign?

You are probably thinking of the mucus layer (not the skin), and it's usually due to bad water.

Aha.....so if a mucus layer is shed, it's best to do a nice big water change?

Do a water test before you do so to be sure, but yes, that's the general idea.

I presume you are talking about the white mucus film that you see floating in your tank. Depending on what fish you have in the tank, some fish will eat the mucus. I have kept serveral lima's for many years and mine pretty much just do it when they get spooked or sometime's my largest one does it when he is getting excited while eating. When they get spooked the mucus just seems to come off of the body but sometimes I have seen them shake their body side to side and then the mucus comes off. Every shovelnose I have ever kept does it occaisonally, but it should not be an everyday event. They may do it more often when the water is bad but I do at least weekly water changes on all tanks and water quality is not usually a problem for me. Test kits as said can easily tell you if that's the issue or not.

I have 3 limas and all 3 will occasionally shed their mucas layer though never all at the same time, surely if it was a water quality issue then all 3 limas would be shedding at the same time? I am pretty certain that the shedding is more to do with growth of the fish as my 3 always seem to do it shortly after a extended period of growth, this seems to be proved true since my largest lima which is now around 14" now sheds the least often while my smallest which is only 6" is now growing rapidly and sheds most frequently, about once a fortnight. My tank is a 778 litre/205 us gallon which is filtered with 3 eheim classic 2217's and using peat filtration, my water quality is always good with the nitrates below 40ppm and i keep the pH and hardness at levels suitable for amazonian fish by using RO water (pH 6.8 and GH 8 ).


edited to remove annoying smiley that appeard instead of the 8 ) at the end