I am not sure what is wrong with one of our Cichlids. He has been picked on a little lately some nipped fins and some minor battle marks. Now all of the sudden he is not eating well and is swimming in the corner and he looks like a total different fish. He is a different color, all of his fins look like they are shredded and most of his scales look like they are falling off. All of the other fish look fine I tested the water and it was perfect. Do you think he is sick or just been picked on to much? I included some pictures but he looks way worse in person. The last picture is what he looks like normally.

I'd recommend you move him to another tank and let him recover. He looks beat up and very stressed. From the pics, it doesn't appear that he's "sick" per se, but that's hard to tell from a pic. Hopefully, you can move him and give him some time to recover. I'd recommend adding a little stress coat initially and giving it a day or two. If you see other symptoms, then try medication. If all your conditions are optimum, then, what it looks like is a result of some severe aggression.
FWIW
mike

Thanks for the info Mike. Unfortunately we don't have another tank to put him in and the tanks he is in is a bowfront and I can't find anything that will fit inside the tank to seperate him. We added some salt to the water and PrazilPro. Do you think it could be fin rot? If so can we add another antibiotic on top of the prazilPro. He seems to be swimming around more so I hope that is a good sign.

I agree with mpp, and would say the fish is stressed, now as you cant seperate the fish then i would say you will need to keep a very close eye on the fish. Sorry i have not come across prazilPro, so i dont know what it is used to treat, but you might want to think about using an anti fungal treatment

More then half of his tail fin has fallen off from every picture on the net that I can find it looks alot like fin rot.

I think mpp meant prazzi-pro...

And BD & Afro - you're about 100 feet from a bottle of it. Give me a call.

It's not always preferable to treat an entire tank, but I have done it to a whole tank full of Discus with no ill effects....and Africans are much hardier. I'd just be careful to follow the directions to a T.

IMO and experience, I think every effort should be made to seperate the ailing and stressed fish--even if you rig a storage container for a hospital tank. My experience has told me that it's basically pointless to treat a sick fish if the tankmates constantly beat it up. Why? Because a stressed out fish can't heal or does so very slowly and usually ends up dieing. Which means buying meds, treating the tank, and exposing the other inhabitants will have been a waste of resources, etc.

Not a bad idea.

For raising fry, I buy those 15 gallon plastic containers from WalMart & hook up a heater & sponge filter. Pretty cheap to do so, too.

That might be the way to go.

Also when you think about it it is cheeper to treat a hospital tank than your full system

Thanks for all of the info guys Do you think moving him would stress him out more? He seems to be doing better. He is eating really good and swimming around. His fins got worse after the pictures I took pieces of his tail and dorsal fins fell off, but they haven't gotten any worse or better for the past few days now. We have been treating the tank with fin rot medication which is getting expensive but I am afraid to move him. If I get a tank or container for him would it have to cycle before we could put him in there? We don't have an extra heater and our extra filter we have is used but not by us. Does anybody have any ideas how to section off a bow front tank

Firstly you can section your tank of with a piece of glass, perspect etc etc. Moving him may put him under stress, but then how much stress is he under staying where he is ? If you do move him then yes you will have to cycle the water for him to go into, but remember it is cheeper to treat a smaller hospital tank than a full system, but if you have not got either a fillter or heater then its not an option.

Hrmm I know I will throw an M-67 or an HE where he likes to spawn that will fix his fins for good

GRENADA!!!!!!!!!!




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Update! We sectioned him off from the rest of the tank with plexiglass that we attempted to put holes in. It doesn't look pretty but I am glad to say he is on his way to hopefully a full recovery Thanks again for everyones help.