My Firemouth is acting strange

Delco

Delco

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Dec 6, 2002
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Since Saturday my firemouth (FM) has not been himself. First off his eyes are usually blue and they are now a light orange. Second, he normally chases my Jack Dempsey away when he steps onto his turf. He has not been doing this and the JD has been hanging around him without the FM even paying him any mind. Third, the FM has been very inactive, he's not been swiming around after food like usual. His colors look OK but his look is very blank though. This morning when I opened the top to feed the fish he just floated down and landed on top of the piece of driftwood I have and was resting on it.

What I think happened is my Green Terror & black shark had a big fight and he ended up getting whacked by the BS. The reason I'm guessing this is that the BS is torn up on his side a bit and he and the GT are always getting into it. The BS is notorious for just snapping and chasing everything in the tank around.

So is the FM did get nailed what can I do to treat him? I don't have another tank setup yet to quarantine him. Any suggestions on what to do to diagnose and treat the fish?
 
if he shows signs of any diseases then treat them. Otherwise you have two choices, wait and see if he recovers, or move him to a diffrent tank. Firemouths are pretty wimpy as cichlids go, especially with a GT in the tank he is goign to be on the low end of the scale. Im suprised he can even fight off the dempsey.
 
His color looks OK and no other fish looks like he does so I don't know if he's sick, he normally kicks my JD's ***. I guess I don't have any choice but to wait it out and see what happens.
 
Well I got home yesterday & found him dead sunk to the bottom on his side. ****, he was 7 years old and I still don't know what happened to him. All of my other fish seem to be doing OK but I did a water change and cleaned out my filters just to be sure. Man he really had some nice colors and was a really cool fish, what a downer. He spent his first 6 years in a 20 gallon and after I rescued him, his last year in my 90 gallon tank where he spent his days beating up my JD. He is survived by a Jack Dempsey, a Green Terror, a Black shark and 3 silver dollars.
 
7 years is a pretty decent amount of time for a firemouth to live. He may have just died of natural causes. Just might have been its time to go. I wouldn't stress on it anymore than mourning your loss, but as far as trying to figure it out, if nothing else in the tank are showing signs of illness, I would just let it go.
 
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