Order from Dan at Cichlids of the Americas

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Well today is the day..... it's 11:43 am in Phoenix, still no delivery yet. The suspense is killing me!
 
Congrats. I only dealt with dan once but it was a good experience and would def order from him again
 
Ok so the wait is over! Mostly good news but we do have some concerns. The biggest problem was that one of the Festae bags sprung a leak during shipping. There was very little water left in the bag and I had no choice but to just throw him in the tank. Based on the marking of the bag, I believe it's the male. The others had no such bag issues so the acclimation process was normal for them.

I observed them once in the tank for maybe 15 minutes and the male Festae seems to be ok for the moment. At first he basically sunk and was very dark but he's now regained some color and is free swimming in the tank.

All this happened right around the normal feeding time for the silver dollars...... So i thought I would feed them per normal and just see which, if any, of the new additions would go for it. Not surprisingly, they were mostly still acclimating and had no interest but the Breidohri ate immediately!

Another potential issue I see is that the Breidohri has a small white speck on the tip of it's right fin. It has the look of Ick to be honest but I don't see any other dots on it or the other fish so I'm not so sure.

We have some light nipping going on, that's expected out of these guys but I was a little surprised that it started so soon. They seemed to have settled in very quickly which is good of course. The escondido has been the most pushy towards the other cichlids and the Breidohri is not fond of the silver dollars for some reason. I've never had a cichlid go after a silver dollar with any real intent so we'll see if that's just an anomaly.

Ok so picture time. Escondido has no fear of me or the camera so that was easy. What I believe is the female Festae also was not too shy. The breidohri is very dark and the pics were blurry so I decided to wait till I can get a better one. The leaky bag Festae (believed to be male) was difficult to capture so we'll wait and the Salvini was hanging out in the back but I got 1 half decent pic.

Escondido1.jpg
Escondido2.jpg
Escondido3.jpg
Fesate1.jpg
Festae2.jpg
salvini1.jpg
 
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Well it took me a while to right and upload pics..... I've been watching some more and I'm seeing more issues. One of the festae, I believe the female, has white stringy poop.... not good. Could this be caused just by stress of the 2 day trip? I guess is no but I'm hoping. I also am now seeing a few more very tiny white specks on some of the others. These specks are on the tip of their bottom fins, not sure of the name of those fins, Caudal maybe?

More pics
Festae White poop.jpg
Tough to capture but you can see the white stringy poop here. it's about 3 times as long as what you can see. it sort of floated up behind the fish during the pic.
Festae Ick1.jpg
A Great picture of the male? I've nicknamed him Leaky. It's not showing well but there's a white speck on his bottom front fin.
Festae ick2.jpg
Another look at Leaky. The white speck is showing better in this pic. otherwise, not the greatest shot. Salvini photo bomb though.
Breidohri ick1.jpg
Ok this is a horrible pic normally but you can clearly make out the white speck on the right fin. In case you can't find the fish, lol it's right in the lower middle of the wood where the wood meets the gravel. Right fin showing a white speck. For what it's worth, it's the largest of all the white specks.
 
I just realized that I never posted the leaky bag pick. Here he is in really really bad shape.
Bag Leak Festae.jpg
 
I had white spec's on fins of some of my fish for a while. Never figure out what it was, but a cycle of NitroFurazone cured it. It didn't cure Hex, though. I had white stringy poop for a while, too. Knocked that out with RD's Epsom Salt soaked food trick.

I think they'll be fine once you treat for Hex for a few days.
 
would you mind explaining the Epsom Salt food trick? how much epsom and do i put the food in a cup of water with the salt? how long? and is it safe to treat them right away considering how new the environment is?

Nitrofurazone? is that to treat ick or something else?
 
Nice to hear you had a successful delivery and seem pretty happy.
 
Nice fish man. Leaky bags happen what can you do. Ive had the same issue with rapps once cant blame him and the fish survived sometimes things happen. Glad they are doing ok. There is a sticky in the health section written by @rd

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/treating-hexamita-aka-spironucleus.523470/

You could also try nls hex shield. It sucks that you werent able to qt them but thats life. From past experiences i qt and treat with parasite gaurd no matter the source of the fish and do a round of eepsom soaked pellets
 
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