There is a beautiful 5-6" heros notatus in my LFS and he has been there for a while. He seems to be a bit bullied by the other severums in the tank and is quite docile. The only thing is he seems to have a deformed/disfigured dorsal fin. It looks like it has got chunks taken out of it and originally I thought that it was from aggression from the other fish but several weeks later he still has exactly the same problem and it looks like a permanent disfigurement. Has anyone seen this sort of thing before? Do you think his dorsal fin damage will grow back? I am popping down there next weekend and will take a picture but cannot do that until then.
Heros Notatus with deformed dorsal fin
- Thread starter sunshinehippy
- Start date
sunshinehippy;3613860; said:
Yeah, a picture would help. I've found that sometimes if the fins are damaged from fighting and they're in poor water quality, the fins won't grow back properly. This could be from infection, I guess.
My friend Al took a heckel discus with horribly disfigured fins and actually trimmed them down with sterile scissors to remove the damage. He kept the fish in really clean water and in about a month the fins had completely grown back and looked normal. The defects were gone. He even trimmed some of the hard spines on the dorsal which had been damaged and over time they regenerated.
I've done this to a couple angelfish with the same result. However, if you're dealing with an actual birth defect or if the defect was caused by poor conditions when the fish were young, it's probably irreversible. I had a male Laetacara dorsigera that completely chewed his mate's tail off right down to the caudal peduncle, and the tail grew back deformed. The damage was done to her actual body and I don't think the fins will ever be normal because of this.
It really just depends on what caused the damage.
Thanks for that. Yes, it really is a guessing game but apart from the fin he is so pretty - has shades of brown, yellow, purple, green and blue running through him with nice worming on the face. It is such a shame really.
sunshinehippy;3613892; said:
Maybe you should see if they'll sell him for a discount since he's got the fin damage, then you can bring him home and keep him anyway. If it doesn't grow back you can just say he's unique.
They did offer him to me for £20 which is about half the price advertised (they are expensive lol) - I will take another look at him on Saturday and make up my mind then. I will take some photos and post them here.
If it's a small split then there's a good chance it'll grow back. But if it's more serious (e.g., missing spikes), then it's most likely permanent.
If it looks like a physical injury when the fish was younger, you can still breed it....
If it looks like a physical injury when the fish was younger, you can still breed it....