Sick pearsei

[DMD123]

Kirby the pearsei has been off his feed and zero interest in anything for the past two weeks. Im ready to do force feed treatment with medication at this point. While I an not saying ‘duck lips’ is the issue, a lot of how its acting and now how its holding its mouth is very similar.

Ive dealt with this in the past quite successfully: https://www.wafishbox.com/forums/threads/duck-lips-treatment-on-cichlid.9803/

Im likely going to try a similar approach to treatment, but I might move my puffer to its new tank and use a 65B as a hospital for the pearsei. Might do a meth blue bath before the move into the 65, this will help with any dead flesh which it seems might be in its mouth.

 

[sir_keith]

So what's the etiology here? The loss of appetite and stringy feces are often due to stress-related systemic infections, but your 300 looks (to me) like a pretty low-stress environment, and with the way you take care of your tanks, water quality is obviously not an issue. So I'm at a loss to explain this. In any event, good luck.

 

[DMD123]

Ive ran into this before with my last pearsei. Weirdly at about the same size. Just completely goes off food and appears to have some swelling/infection to its upper mouth. There is no reason for stress… the balas are calm and don’t compete with it, the bichirs are complete logs. I do regular heavy water changes, dont overfeed and use high quality foods. Oh well, time to tackle this head on and see how it goes.

 

[DMD123]

Pretty sure it something along the lines of columnaris. Have moved him into a 65B and medicated but I wont be able to fix this one…likely a goner in the next day or two.

 

[sir_keith]

Really sorry to hear that...

 

[DMD123]

Really sorry to hear that...

Thanks for the kind words. He just passed this evening. Sad since he had at least 8 more years in him and was only 12 1/2” long. Wasnt even full grown yet.

 

[lloyd378]

Dang, I am so sorry to hear this!

 

[DMD123]

Dang, I am so sorry to hear this!

Thanks, was tough cause this one was in so many ways more outgoing than my previous one. One of my all time favorite cichlids for a large community tank because they are calm and peaceful. Just not sure if I want to raise another baby out or see if I can aquire a bigger one somehow…

 

[DMD123]

Took me a while to remember this since it was so many years ago but my previous pearsei (Porkchop) had pretty much at the same size in its life started down the same path of going off its feed and start to wither away. Likely columnaris too.

But I was a lot more alert and had a recent tank die off from a rookie mistake (adding unquarantined wild caught fish to an established tank), so I dealt with it better and faster. I feel as if there is a change that happens at this point where the fish becomes more susceptible to stress, maybe its puberty stage to adulthood? just was an interesting memory.

Likely if I would have done the force feed medicine treatments with the kanaplex and other medicines in the cocktail mix Ive done in the past, about two weeks ago when I first noticed the strange behavior, I might have been able to save him.