CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

Ummm, well where to start. I have a 55 gal tank with 3 Oscars and 1 pleco. They all started about 1 1/2 inches about a month ago. Now the pleco is at least 3 and two of my oscars are almost 3. But the one I am worried about hasn't seemed to grow at all. He got bullied real bad after the first week or two, and one of the others took a little chunk out of his underbelly right near his anus. I separated the bully until I thought things settled down, and they did for a day. It has gone on for a little while. I have the little guy separated away from the others because he is so small and he hasn't been eating. I have been feeding him separately for a day or so, and he seems to be less stressed out. But now, for the area that the chunk is missing, he has what looks kind of like a cotton ball trying to come out of his anus. It is all fuzzy looking, and has some stringy tendrils coming off of it. The tendrils are the same color as his food and waste, but the white fuzzy part has me really scared for him. Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong with him? BTW, my water quality is good. No ammonia/nitrite the temp is around 80 and I have about 1 tbsp/10 gal aquarium salt in there. Haven't checked the pH yet this week, but it was right around 7.5 last week. Other than that I can't think of any pertinent info. TIA for any and all advice.


OH yeah, I have been feeding them all just pellets and freeze dried bloodworms. They don't seem to like tubifex, but the love the bloodworms. And I recently changed to a new type of pellet. I had started them on tetrachichlid minigranules, but I have tried to change them to a different brand of floating type because the other was casuing water issues. But they don't seem to care for it, especially the little guy. The new pellets are bigger, but the guy at my LFS said that he should be able to eat them just fine. Anyway thanks again for any advice that might come.

[This message has been edited by 2KOOL (edited 06-28-2002).]

its probably a fugal infection. go to the LFS and by some meds for fungus. try to do it in another tank (other than the main one) if you have another (with heater, etc.) reason is that the medicaton would probably kill of your biological bacteria.

Unfortunately I only have the one setup right now. So what kind of meds would you suggest? I was looking at one of the mods site(Tony I think) and his recommendation on there was malachite green I think. But I didn't quite understand the description of his treatment method. What do you suggest?