No worries Steve, I know exactly where this all came from. Methinks you are more easily offended than you let on. Either way, feel free to ignore, or not, it certainly won't be affecting me.
All excess calories have the potential to be converted to fat, but typically in fish food a fatty liver condition is caused by excess crude fat. As an example, someone feeding trout chow to a cichlid, as most trout chow has a higher protein level, and much higher lipid levels. That's why I asked what the crude protein, and crude fat levels are in Steve's food. (not fiber) Years ago there was a paper written on this exact thing by Ruth Francis-Floyd et al, at the University of Florida where trout chow was fed to African cichlids, including a carnivorous species, and even the short term results from this 12 week study were alarming.
Also from this paper;
"Fatty infiltration of the liver has also been designated "the most common metabolic disturbance and most frequent cause of death in aquarium fish"
"With prolonged feeding of a high-energy, lipid rich diet, degenerative changes of the liver and death can occur unless the diet is corrected."
This study came about after some cichlid farms in south FL suffered from some large mortalities in both 1998 & 1999. When the dead fish were examined they showed fatty infiltration of the liver, heavy vacuolation, and severe necrosis of the liver, pancreas, and spleen.
It was suggested to the farms that they replace their feeds with one that had a lower lipid content (less than 10%) and supplement the feed with a vitamin premix. Clinical signs in the affected farms were resolved after implementation of these recommendations.
And yes, one can purchase lower protein/fat food, but honestly it sounds to me like this fish is simply a very aggressive eater in the tank and fish that it is currently cohabitating in. If target feeding becomes an option, I would personally feed gel food to this fish, as it mostly consists of water. That might help get things under control.
All excess calories have the potential to be converted to fat, but typically in fish food a fatty liver condition is caused by excess crude fat. As an example, someone feeding trout chow to a cichlid, as most trout chow has a higher protein level, and much higher lipid levels. That's why I asked what the crude protein, and crude fat levels are in Steve's food. (not fiber) Years ago there was a paper written on this exact thing by Ruth Francis-Floyd et al, at the University of Florida where trout chow was fed to African cichlids, including a carnivorous species, and even the short term results from this 12 week study were alarming.
Also from this paper;
"Fatty infiltration of the liver has also been designated "the most common metabolic disturbance and most frequent cause of death in aquarium fish"
"With prolonged feeding of a high-energy, lipid rich diet, degenerative changes of the liver and death can occur unless the diet is corrected."
This study came about after some cichlid farms in south FL suffered from some large mortalities in both 1998 & 1999. When the dead fish were examined they showed fatty infiltration of the liver, heavy vacuolation, and severe necrosis of the liver, pancreas, and spleen.
It was suggested to the farms that they replace their feeds with one that had a lower lipid content (less than 10%) and supplement the feed with a vitamin premix. Clinical signs in the affected farms were resolved after implementation of these recommendations.
And yes, one can purchase lower protein/fat food, but honestly it sounds to me like this fish is simply a very aggressive eater in the tank and fish that it is currently cohabitating in. If target feeding becomes an option, I would personally feed gel food to this fish, as it mostly consists of water. That might help get things under control.
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