Help I have a 12 inch red devil in which I notice yesterday that she is starting to get a hole in her head . What can I do to stop it!!!
hole in head
- Thread starter Tinman
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Add some table salt (non iodized) 1 tblspn per 5 g of water. Second theres a few different meds you can use. I use stress zyme and it worked for my 5" Oscar. The hole was gone after about 4-6 days. Also try i think it's called hole be gone something like that.. what hole in the head is, is a intestinal disease that spreads through the body causing the parisite to feed on the flesh on the head.
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You need to do a large-scale water change first. HITH is often brought about by poor water quality. After a few days, if the hole continues to progress, you should think about adding an anti-flagellate medication. I'm sure that others on this board can give you a few good brand names. As I have no experience with treating HITH in the real world, I cannot tell you what those meds may be...
Great HITH column in a recent AFM by Paul Loiselle.
He explains that we encounter 2 "types" of HITH in the hobby.
The first (and, surprisingly least common of the two) is your protozoan-caused HITH. Loiselle suspects that some stressor triggers either hexamita or spironucleus protozoan populations to grow and affect the fish's health. Fish with this first type of HITH will stop eating, excrete white/slimy feces, and develop puss-filled holes in the head area.
The second and most common type of HITH we encounter is caused by environmental stress. Some hard-to-determine aspect of how the fish is kept again triggers facial and lateral line erosion. Loiselle points out that the pores on the fish actually die, thus becoming larger as the surrounding tissue dies as well. Fish with this 2nd type of HITH generally continue to feed and digest normally.
Although we tend to look at "dirty" conditons arising from poor maintenance as the culprit, HITH also arises in clean, well-filtered and well-maintained aquariums. Why? Best I've been able to figure is that some aspect of fish husbandry (likely water chemistry and/or nutrition) fails to meet the needs of the particular species.
This helps explain why you might have an aquarium with several different species of cichlids, only one of which gets HITH. It also explains why a certain species you've repeatedly tried to raise in different tanks (in my case, Carpinte cichlids) keeps pitting out. Though it's still supposition on my part, I've got very soft water here in CT, and suspect that is at least part of the cause.
So, while there's a boatload of meds out there for HITH, they are only of potential use in cases of what we'll call "Type 1 (protozoan) HITH", and are not going to do a thing for Type 2 (environmental) HITH. In fact, blasting away with the meds is just going to futher irritate Type 2.
He explains that we encounter 2 "types" of HITH in the hobby.
The first (and, surprisingly least common of the two) is your protozoan-caused HITH. Loiselle suspects that some stressor triggers either hexamita or spironucleus protozoan populations to grow and affect the fish's health. Fish with this first type of HITH will stop eating, excrete white/slimy feces, and develop puss-filled holes in the head area.
The second and most common type of HITH we encounter is caused by environmental stress. Some hard-to-determine aspect of how the fish is kept again triggers facial and lateral line erosion. Loiselle points out that the pores on the fish actually die, thus becoming larger as the surrounding tissue dies as well. Fish with this 2nd type of HITH generally continue to feed and digest normally.
Although we tend to look at "dirty" conditons arising from poor maintenance as the culprit, HITH also arises in clean, well-filtered and well-maintained aquariums. Why? Best I've been able to figure is that some aspect of fish husbandry (likely water chemistry and/or nutrition) fails to meet the needs of the particular species.
This helps explain why you might have an aquarium with several different species of cichlids, only one of which gets HITH. It also explains why a certain species you've repeatedly tried to raise in different tanks (in my case, Carpinte cichlids) keeps pitting out. Though it's still supposition on my part, I've got very soft water here in CT, and suspect that is at least part of the cause.
So, while there's a boatload of meds out there for HITH, they are only of potential use in cases of what we'll call "Type 1 (protozoan) HITH", and are not going to do a thing for Type 2 (environmental) HITH. In fact, blasting away with the meds is just going to futher irritate Type 2.
Most fish susceptable to HITH came from soft water. These include guarami, discus, angels, geophagus and oscar. African Rift Lake cichlid, which came from hard water, never seem to develop HITH.