sick gobi dragon need advice

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peekaboo

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 7, 2009
8
0
0
arizona
I have had my gobi dragon 'peekaboo' for about two years. he is in a brackish tank that started as freshwater and I gradually bumped it up to it's current salinity of 1.012 over the course of a few months and it has been near that salinity for over a year. He is in a 47gal tank with one archer, one catfish thing, and a night gobi a sand substrate and a nice log that he has made into a little cave. The problem is that he has become dangerously thin! Really sad to look at thin! :( I feed him blood worms which he used to happily gulp up but it seems he is less actively eating. I see his gills expanding a lot after i put them in the tank so I assume he's getting some (or at least hope). He has almost no color and is bleached out to a pale cream except for on his tail. he also has a dark spot on his side that looks suspicious. I've tried mysis shrip and in the past gave him algae wafers (which he didn't take much intrest in). Is he doomed? Am I doing something wrong? Is the salinity to high or low? I've seen happy gobis in marine so I'm thinking too low? please some educated advice.
 
What are your water parameters? Ammonia? Nitrites? Nitrates? Salinity? pH?

Have you fed feeder fish/shrimp recently?
 
That's a good question.I just did a 45 percent water change day before yesterday, I'll head down to the pet store and get it checked today and see the results. Which leads me ask is it worth it to buy a testing kit? Are they hard to use? He's had the mysis shrip for a couple weeks but he's not going for the bloodworms now either...
 
I got a test kit to test levels in the tank and results were: amonia 0.50, nitrite:0, nitrate:0, pH 7.8, salinity is at 1.012, temp is hovering around 79 degrees. intersting update: At my trusty aquaria supply store I spoke with the guy there, he told me that the catfish I had in the tank has poisonous spines on it. He offered the ideas that the catfish was poisoning my gobi fish and stealing food because they occupy the same strata in the tank. Can anyone confirm or debunk this? I took the culprit fish out 48 hrs ago and gave put lots of algae tabs. There seems to be a little color comming back into my gobi...
 
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