I came home from work today,to find the side of my Texas Cichlid messed up where its missing scales and looks to be a injury,but he is moving around like nothing is wrong.After doing a water change today,I added aquarium salt to help with the wound.The only two fishes in my tank I know who can cause serious damage is my Jack Dempsey and Green Terror,but my Jack Dempsey doesn't bother with anyone,unless he feels threaten.I have the lights off,since the activity stops at night time.I don't have a extra tank that is available to be used,since the 55 gallon tank is occupied and that one is my brothers tank,so I can't quarantine the Texas by himself,is there any other method I can use,besides Aquarium salt?Also I am getting rid of the female Green Terror,since she seems to be the one always chasing him around at times,but never bothered attacking once at all,it seems like today was the day the Texas had enough and started to fight back,but lost the battle.Also everytime I try to take a picture,he just turns the other way,so sorry no picture.
Need some help
- Thread starter burzumaske20
- Start date
The tank is a 125 gallon,I have tried a divider in the past,those things can't even hold up very well for the price I ended up paying at a pet store.The other thing I did was raise the temperature a little bit to 82 degrees,also I use prime every time I do water changes,suppose to provide slime coat.
for a tank that size and big cichlids, the super expensive dividers at the petstore are worthless, what we are saying to use if the thick plastic eggcrate/light diffuser stuff you get at a home improvement store, its not nearly as expensive and you just cut it to size and put rocks or other deco on each side to keep it in place (also fyi, aquarium salt is a rip off, you can use any salt to help with stuff like that, for ich treatments and what not i use the regular morton's table salt in the blue box, always have at least one box of it in my fish drawer, just make sure the salt doesnt have "yellow prussiate" as its caking agent)
I would try and egg crate divider, get another tank, or remove the culprit who did the damage. Texas cichlids are one of those CA's that will fight until they kill or be killed. For the wounds I would get melafix. Salt is good, but melafix will prevent any infection.
I can't just put Melafix in the tank can I,if other fishes are in the 125 gallon correct? The only culprit who has done it is the Green Terror.I really have no where else to put the Green Terror honestly.The 55 gallon that is my brothers is already overcrowded.
You will be fine w/ the melafix. I've done that before, won't harm anything. If you don't want to get rid of the GT and don't have any other space then try the egg crate divider. You can get it ant most hardware stores like Home Depot. It is cheap too. The plastic ones from the pet store really suck and are worthless.
If all else fails and you keep the fish together one will die and it won't even matter. Trust me I've benn there and done that. I had to give up a female texas that couldn't be kept w/ anything. It sucked giving her up, but at least no fish died because of me.
When one of mine had a massive injury, I made my 29g into a hospital tank. I kept the temp at 82F, added salt and even dressed the wound with Neosporin when I thought it was starting to get infected (at the risk of stressing her out). Most of all, I kept the water very clean by doing small water changes almost daily. Also keeping the lights low will help keep stress down imo. Melafix IME is worthless.
The male Texas minds its own business usually,but will fight off other cichlids in my tank,that always try to bully him around.I can see how much Home Depot charges for the egg crate,but if the price is just too high,then I will have to get rid of the GT then.