femurphy77
Grandmaster
After Several years hiatus we have our 180 back up and running. We've plumbed in a 35 gallon sump, have several rock hiding places, a nice piece of driftwood and several fake plants and sand substrate. We vacuum regularly and do about a 40 gallon water change weekly. We used a bio cycle prior to populating it and our ph is around 8.2. We've started slowly with 7 malawi's bought from the same tank in the same store to ensure compatibility. Our water chemistry is dead nuts on.
You knew a problem was coming right? About 3 weeks ago we started losing one fish at a time and are down to our last two. The only symptoms I've seen are lethargy, hanging around the bottom, ultimately swimming/floating upside down on the bottom then death. One was trailing white poo a couple of weeks ago but he's been doing strong until today when he bellied up. Another one went with it so I did an impromptu post mortem on him and since my high school biology class internal fish organ identifying fu went away many moons ago the only thing I can say is that there was a lot of white puss looking stuff in the anal cavity and further into the organ cavity was some type of black substance. This particular one seemed somewhat bloated where the other seemed slightly emaciated in my non fish doc opinion.
Any cichlid experts have any insight?
Yeah I know, pretty specific right?
You knew a problem was coming right? About 3 weeks ago we started losing one fish at a time and are down to our last two. The only symptoms I've seen are lethargy, hanging around the bottom, ultimately swimming/floating upside down on the bottom then death. One was trailing white poo a couple of weeks ago but he's been doing strong until today when he bellied up. Another one went with it so I did an impromptu post mortem on him and since my high school biology class internal fish organ identifying fu went away many moons ago the only thing I can say is that there was a lot of white puss looking stuff in the anal cavity and further into the organ cavity was some type of black substance. This particular one seemed somewhat bloated where the other seemed slightly emaciated in my non fish doc opinion.
Any cichlid experts have any insight?
Yeah I know, pretty specific right?