So I picked up two keyhole cichlids yesterday from a local fish club auction. No one else seemed to want them and I kinda felt sorry for them. They are in a 72g tank along with some green fire tetras (which havent been eaten yet yay!). One of them did really well upon introduction from the get go. ie. swimming and pecking at gravel immediately. The other I thought would not make it since it simply laid there at the bottem sometimes almost on it side. They were both bagged for a very long time 4-5+ hours so I did not have high hopes of the sickly one surviving the night.
Well today both were still around. In fact when I went to feed the tetras they both started feeding as well. However, the sickly one seems to have some sort of swim bladder problem. It does not seem to be able to gain any bouyancy at all. It really has to struggle to get any height from the bottom of the tank, in fact it appears to slide around on the bottom. When it tries to swim up it ends up in the vertical position because the backside seems to be dragging it down. It has no other overt signs of sickness besides this swimming issue and overall lethargy. All other fish are fine and water parameters seem fine (I am using the tetra liquid test kit (would be api but purchased tetra before I found out about it)).
On another note the healthy cichlid seems to peck at the sickly one and the sickly one ends up having to scoot around the bottom alot to avoid the healthy one. Is this normal behaviour? I thought they were supposed to be super peaceful?
Well today both were still around. In fact when I went to feed the tetras they both started feeding as well. However, the sickly one seems to have some sort of swim bladder problem. It does not seem to be able to gain any bouyancy at all. It really has to struggle to get any height from the bottom of the tank, in fact it appears to slide around on the bottom. When it tries to swim up it ends up in the vertical position because the backside seems to be dragging it down. It has no other overt signs of sickness besides this swimming issue and overall lethargy. All other fish are fine and water parameters seem fine (I am using the tetra liquid test kit (would be api but purchased tetra before I found out about it)).
On another note the healthy cichlid seems to peck at the sickly one and the sickly one ends up having to scoot around the bottom alot to avoid the healthy one. Is this normal behaviour? I thought they were supposed to be super peaceful?
. I might have to go pick one up to separate the two.