Poorly angelfish

[pandapie]

Can anyone advise please. My male angelfish is not moving, I have 4 altogether one 'couple' and two other males. The male from the couple does get aggressive but this one usually holds his own. I think he's probably taken a beating but he is facing upwards at the back of the tank, not eating or moving. Looks like some scales may be missing - he's not as shiny.

Water 0, 0, 40. Established tank, had him from tiny, he's around a year. Couple are not laying right now ( they do every few weeks but plec devours!)

I bought 5 guppies over a month ago. Lost 3 of the new ones and my two boys. Also left my female with a fungus and fin rot. I've treated with melafix and pimafix and my guppy is about better but now my angelfish been like this for two days. I've just added some aquarium salt - 7teaspoons.

I don't have a hospital tank but I have a small 12l one that I could sort out but need to purchase heater/filter.

Also have 3 x danios, 6x neon tetras, 2x bristle nose plecs, 4 guppies. 125l planted tank.

Any ideas what to do. I did a 50%water change yest.


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[Andy Sager]

Unfortunately, it looks to be too late for this fish. You can try to put him into another tank ( if it is still alive) and be prepared to use some medications against bacterial or fungal diseases that may attack the wounds but that's about the only thing for this fish at this point. This is a common occurance in tanks once a breeding pair has been established.
FYI, breeding pairs of Angelfish are best kept either alone or with no other Angelfish in the tank. They are cichlids and as such, can be extremely brutal to challengers of their mates. To keep Angelfish in non breeding multiples, you are better off keeping all the same gender than trying to mix them.

Hope this helps.

 

[pandapie]

Hi, thanks for your reply. I've had these guys for a year and the only time they really become aggressive is when the pair are looking after their eggs. obviously at the time of purchase I had no idea of what sex they were. Then they coupled up and I didn't want to get rid of any. They are my favourites. If it is due to the aggressiveness then why now, not before. The fourth one is like the runt, he didn't grow as much as the others but he's fine. Maybe like you say, he's not challenging so not getting beat in! It might not be that but I can't see any marks on him or fungus or anything apart from his scales. I don't want him to die he's only 1 :-(


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[Andy Sager]

Hi, thanks for your reply. I've had these guys for a year and the only time they really become aggressive is when the pair are looking after their eggs. obviously at the time of purchase I had no idea of what sex they were. Then they coupled up and I didn't want to get rid of any. They are my favourites. If it is due to the aggressiveness then why now, not before. The fourth one is like the runt, he didn't grow as much as the others but he's fine. Maybe like you say, he's not challenging so not getting beat in! It might not be that but I can't see any marks on him or fungus or anything apart from his scales. I don't want him to die he's only 1 :-(


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This is the nature of this fish. Why now and not before?, there is no answer to that. The fact is it's happened and truthfully, having personally worked and studied these fish for over 45 years, I can only assume that you were just lucky it hasn't happened before. I just recently went through a similar thing. I had 5 sibling Angels that had been growing up from egg together. They were just starting to come into breeding age so I had placed a few slates in their tank for them to use and for the non breeders to use as shelter if necessary. On a day I was doing my routine water changes, I did their tank first while I went down the line for the rest of the tanks. By the time I was done, the biggest male had all but killed the second largest male in the tank. So we are talking that after living together for over a year, in 25-30 minutes, the fish went from living peacefully to killing each other. ( The beaten male died later that day. ) Sadly, I really wanted the smaller fish for breeding because he had better colors than the "winner". As I said, this is the nature of Angelfish.

As for sexing the fish, I understand.... it is not always easy. You mainly need to get larger fish to do this right from the start. The point I was making was that once a pair has bonded and start laying eggs, it's best to either remove them from the tank and place them a tank of their own or remove the other Angels if you don;t want situations such as this to happen. There really is little choice unless you are dealing with very large and long tanks where the fish can get away from the pair without notice.

Best you can do now is separate the hurt fish and hope for the best.

 

[Delapool]

I lost one recently that was a smaller one. All were getting along better since work wasn't so busy and I could feed each day at same time.

The largest one got ganged up on by two others, then squabbles all over the place. I assume re-establishing the order? Next morning one was off hiding. Next day wasn't doing very well. Put in QT but too late.

 

[pandapie]

Thanks for your replies. Well he is currently still in the corner and today I bought a few more plants to create some more hiding places and he came out for a couple of minutes. My other thoughts were that I recently removed some of my tall plants as they were looking a bit rubbish and you can see from one side of the tank to the other. It all kinda makes sense and I agree that he is staking his territory now. I'm trying to find another tank and I will remove the pair into that but I am limited with room really - one tank is enough. I currently have a spare 12l but can't put them in that. I read somewhere that another option would be to buy another female to level things out a bit but then my "runt" might get it.

Fingers are just crossed he pulls through. I may have to think about getting rid of the males :-( just leave the bully couple.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[pandapie]

Update -(if anyone's interested!) well my angelfish came out today when I fed them and he ate some food. He's back to being the right way round now. He's still being bothered but the plants have helped to give him some more hiding places. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and in process of acquiring a spare tank and I will shift the bully pair so they can mate to their hearts content....

 

[pandapie]

Photo attached

 

[Andy Sager]

Well he definitely looks better than in the other pics. Fish laying down is not a good sign. Hope it all works out.

 

[Delapool]

How did he turn out?