im i too worried
- Thread starter thrillbillie12
- Start date
how big is he? sounds like possibly iche?! trust me on this one.. raising you temp to 87 will not hurt your cichla but should make him more active.. sometimes the 2 degrees helps.. dont add salt it will just stress him out
he is at 4 inches. i know that raising the temp will not hurt my cichla i was more worried about my cichlids. but having the tank at 85 for the past month and my cichlids didnt mind it so i am raising it to 87 now. does iche affect cichla the same way as other fish, i had a gold fish once with iche and cured it, so will i be looking for the same signs, aka white spots.
well if your seeing white spots on any fish i quess that would be the answer .. and ick if it is ick has to go through many cycles so salt and heat should be part of that process and it could take quite awhile before you are done with it...good luck
salt stresses cichla out since they are extremely soft water fish. there are 100% zero salt molecules in soft water.. once you add salt it also stays in your water. h20 will evaporate but salt doesn't. signs of iche is not always visual if you ask me. you will see a gill or a fin flicker once in a while. raising temp will cure iche alone. that type of parasite can not tolerate high heat at all. it causes the life cycle to speed up 10 times faster and they fall off of you cichla or any other fish. just try to keep them well fed and hopefully he will come around. if he stop eatting all together im sorry dude. im not a person to use chemicals at all but melafix may treat interal parasites. in the wild, predatory fish prey on sick and injured fish so i dont know so much of parasite infested feeders effecting them so much and how it gets them.. even though it does tend to happen in our home aquariums which is a shame. iche will cause your cichla to stop feeding or feed less. when i moved one of my orinos from the big tank into my hospital tank.. the first couple of days he ate everything in site and then a week later became slow and sluggish eatting less ect. i just made sure the temps were kept high, water quality the best it could possibly be and just kept feeding him as much as possible. i switched from feeder to live black worms for he is the only one out of all my cichla that will not take market shrimp. he slowly came around and is now an eatting machine. i switched him back to feeder minnows for now. i am trying to get him to catch up in size so can put him with the rest of my guys. soon i will try to get him on market shrimp again.. i hope this info helps
thanks for all the quick reply's guys but i just got home from work and found him at the bottom taking the big sleep. he was my fav fish to and he was just starting to get his colors. thanks again for help guys.
sorry bradda.. i hope this doesnt discourage you from trying them again, might have just been a bad one 
