Marc
26th July 2008, 12:48 PM
As some would know on here, at my previous house I had some rather large tanks and fish (1200L, 1000L and a couple of smaller tanks).
Well upon buying a house, moving, and lack of concrete slab at the new house I had to sell most of the fish and some months later the big tanks are still in the garage effectively in storage until extra stumps are put in the floor of the new place.
In the meantime one fish we wanted to keep was a rather large Geophagus brasiliensis (sp?), definately the largest I've ever seen anyway. He's been given an temporary home in a 3ft tank on his own which he's now had longer than anticipated unfortunately.
Anyway, a much longer story shortened, I've also been slack on the water quality front and a few weeks ago he started looking underfed (I've always kept his food up) so I changed to some cichlid flakes I had from the pellets he's always been on. A few days later, he started swimming nose down, tail up. I thought I'd probably lost him but started trying to treat. Filters were cleaned up, some quick water changes and the addition of about 1-2 cups of salt to the water.
I also changed his food to shelled green peas soaked in water.
Well I'm happy to say that some 4 days after he was literally floating around in the current with little to no control of himself, he's very healthy, eating well and swimming perfectly.
So I'm not entirely sure what fixed it, but we're very pleased and have now concluded that he's earnt the right to be promoted to the 8 ft tank (meaning we have to get off our bums at get it setup!). So that tank will now become an american cichlid tank and hopefully have it setup in the coming weeks.
Well upon buying a house, moving, and lack of concrete slab at the new house I had to sell most of the fish and some months later the big tanks are still in the garage effectively in storage until extra stumps are put in the floor of the new place.
In the meantime one fish we wanted to keep was a rather large Geophagus brasiliensis (sp?), definately the largest I've ever seen anyway. He's been given an temporary home in a 3ft tank on his own which he's now had longer than anticipated unfortunately.
Anyway, a much longer story shortened, I've also been slack on the water quality front and a few weeks ago he started looking underfed (I've always kept his food up) so I changed to some cichlid flakes I had from the pellets he's always been on. A few days later, he started swimming nose down, tail up. I thought I'd probably lost him but started trying to treat. Filters were cleaned up, some quick water changes and the addition of about 1-2 cups of salt to the water.
I also changed his food to shelled green peas soaked in water.
Well I'm happy to say that some 4 days after he was literally floating around in the current with little to no control of himself, he's very healthy, eating well and swimming perfectly.
So I'm not entirely sure what fixed it, but we're very pleased and have now concluded that he's earnt the right to be promoted to the 8 ft tank (meaning we have to get off our bums at get it setup!). So that tank will now become an american cichlid tank and hopefully have it setup in the coming weeks.