Sick cockatoo cichlid?

[Asnie]

My cockatoo cichlid is white and swollen above the mouth. Is it sick? What should I do?

A few days ago I noticed it was hiding and wasn't eating. The next day, it was eating again but I noticed a few red marks above the mouth. It's still eating and swimming around and seems happy. The red marks are gone, but instead it has this rather large swollen white area. It doesn't seem cotton like.

I've had it for 4 months. It was bought as a female, but has grown so large I'm beginning to think it's a male. I also have another male cockatoo cichlid, and a female agassizii. They chase each other once in a while, but nothing too bad, never any serious fights.

Other tank mates are: 20 Odessa barbs, 8 black ruby barbs, 5 pearl gouramis and 2 peacock gobies.

The tank is a 240 L juwel (65 gallon I think) with juwels standard internal filter.

The water parameters are:

Ammonia 0
Nitrite:0
Nitrate: 20
PH: 7,5
Temperature: 26 (Celsius)

I feed the fish flake food, frozen bloodworms and Cyclops, and a frozen vegetable mix for cichlids.




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[Brookster123]

Pic?

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[Asnie]

Here's some pictures

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[KingKoopa512]

I have had this happen to my cockatoo as well

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[Matt68005]

could we have a better pic or video of the exact spot of the lesion in question.
You know chiclids are prone to Hexima aka HITHLLE right?

 

[Brookster123]

What are you testing your water with? Lighting? If that's a low light tank than I'm guessing the nitrates are absolutely out of control, plants talk.. his head is about to pop, I've seen this with dwarf cichlids in less than ideal parameters. I'm going to guess you have stock lighting, with the presence of the algae I see and the plant growth, it would.lead me to believe nitrates are wayyyy high. Tell us everything about the tank please

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[Asnie]

I have tested the water with Colombo drop test. I double check the nitrate reading, it's closer to 10 than 20.
It isn't a low light tank, but it might look that way since both the substrate and background are dark.
The light is juwel T5 2x54 W, it came with the aquarium, they are 6 months old, so they should still be fine.
The hair alga are remnants from the aquarium startup, they are now dwindling.
We do a weekly 25% water change and gravel cleaning. We use Colombo Aqua start after the water change. We have recently used some leftover Colombo Flora Grow.
I tried to take some better pictures.