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ishmael

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Aug 23, 2003
Messages
27
Location
cleveland usa
hey all.
got 2 yellow labs yesterday and one seems a bit odd. his coloring is a lot darker than it should be and it looks like his stomach is concave like he's wasting away. he eats and swims at feeding time, but spends most of the day hanging out by the filter overflow. i've searched some sites and all i could come up with was tuberculosis, but i'm not sure.
any help would be appreciated.
 
It could just be underfeeding due to aggression in the tank he was in. I've lost a few cichlids, but they get lethargic and kinda just sit there, and then die. Give it a couple days and see if his color comes back. Do you have good hiding spaces for the fish? These fish can be very territorial and aggressive towards one another. You can use something as simple as a couple plant pots or get rocks to make caves.
 
What size tank do you have? Even though they are small, they still need space to move around and develop territories. Another thing you might consider is adding more labs. Two of one species is sometimes tough, especially for the subdominant male or females as they bear all of the other fish's aggression. It's often better to have three or four to divvy up the nastiness.

As far as saving the sick one... you might try putting it in a hospital tank (10 gallon) and try some live food... my local pet shop "pro" says that they are more likely to eat live food than pellets when sick, but discontinue this if/when they start eating again(don't spoil them and make them "too cool" for pellets!). Feeder guppies may be too large for them, but live brine shrimp might do the trick???? Definitely check around for 2nd opinions! I'm no pro, but it worked for my borleyi.

Good luck!
 
shawmutt said:
It could just be underfeeding due to aggression in the tank he was in.

never thought of that. should have because he's got a big enough appetite.
i'll give it a few days.
thanks guys.
 
Yeh he's right.

I think the underfeeding thing is right due to the aggressiveness. I'm not sure if what i am about to share is relevant now but i will share it anyway. I have one Jewel cichlid a week ago but have died just this friday. He was the only one of his own kind in my 50 gal tank of 20 different kinds of cichlids. Though he was pretty though, he was always chased by other cichlids in my tank. Maybe they are jealous of the color or something (just a thought) but they cichlids are really aggressive. I thought of having another but the fish shop have no more jewels left so i observed his behaviour for a while. He tends to linger in the filter apparatus and just feeds when the other cichlids are away. He died because of that. Sad. next time i'm gonna get more of them in.
 
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