Goonch shedding skin/sloughing slime coat? Wth?

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C

Chicxulub

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Aug 29, 2009
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After I did a water change tonight, I noticed my little goonch cat appeared to be losing its slime coat. Upon closer examination, the material coming off of the fish actually appears to be skin. It looks for all the world just like the skin that comes off of a lizard. It is very thin and has the texture of the skin below it, just like a lizard's shed. Her colors also seem to be better now. I've never seen anything like this before.

EDIT- and now that I think about it, over the past few days she's been unusually active and has spent a lot more time than usual trying to swim into the current and messing with the powerheads. If she was trying to remove a layer of 'skin', that does make sense.

My water perimeters are perfect, 0/0/10 before the WC, so I don't really know what it could be. Has anyone ever seen anything like this before? This is a head scratcher for me for sure.
 
yeah, I've seen it before also, usually after a disturbance in water. I know they don't like big water changes, the few times I did over 80% water changes, I've always found them dead the following day. that is with water conditioner as well.
 
fugupuff said:
yeah, I've seen it before also, usually after a disturbance in water. I know they don't like big water changes, the few times I did over 80% water changes, I've always found them dead the following day. that is with water conditioner as well.
Click to expand...

agree with wes. i use to do 50% water changes on my 75 gallon holding tanks when i had those 20-22 inch yarellis. they shed right after every water change. doesn't seem to harm them a lot, just irritation. goonch are usually eating a few hours after big wc but i cut it down to 25% a weeks and they never shed after that.
 
I've seen it before to and thought it was normal....I seen a video on youtube of one shedding its skin and eating it.
 
External parasite maybe? The gooch is trying to scratch it..IMO
Any picture?

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Hey folks, C Chicxulub

I do apologize in advance for upping this old thread.

I'm just bringing up this thread to because my goonch, after 6 weeks (yes 1.5 months I'm sure) of not eating anything, suddenly did this.

I wanted to know what you've seen in the past 7+ years from this behavior, if you've gotten any idea of what happened.

This goonch was always the first to food and the first to eat. He even smells food if I drop it in the sump and goes crazy. Then for no reason at all refuses to eat. it goes to where food is yes, then whiplashes everyone away... Then that's it. Just stays there. Doesn't eat. Doesn't try to eat. Food directly under it's mouth is ignored.

I never heard of a cat going on hunger strike, but it's pretty common with my other fishes. It's just that this shedding came absolutely out of nowhere.

Would love to see if anyone else had these issues. And yes, I make it a point to do a 90% water change every 2 weeks and it never shed slime coat.

My wc schedule is as follows;

Weekly M - W - F - Sat = 30% (if I miss, it's usually just 1 day)
Bi-monthly - W - F = 30%, Sun = 90%

Here's a video. Goonch shedding slime
 
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