I know this forum is for saltwater fish but no one anywhere else has been able to tell me what's wrong with this acara so here I am.
I got it about 6 months ago and it looked like a normal EBA nothing special. Did my usual basic 3 week quarantine (salt+observation, meds as needed) and he came out fine and went in the display.
Over the next about month, it started slowly turning white like this. Acts normal and eats the whole time.
This is how it looks now
It's never improved since then. Also has not grown and it's belly has stayed sunken in even though it eats a ton.
I took it out and had it in the quarantine for about 4 months. Over the 4 months, I treated it (not necessarily at the same time but just at different intervals) with the following...
- Salt, going up as high as 1.003sg at one point
- Metroplex dosing for about 2 weeks
- Prazipro, tank dosing for 2 weeks, then mixing it in with food for about 2 weeks after that. Was seeing normal poops. I still am thinking it's internal parasites, just must not be any 'normal' kind... And I know the way I was doing it was right, I assume, because i was treating my goldfish in another tank the same way and it successfully dewormed her.
- Seachem stress guard, basically every few days on and off
- Isolation, to rule out that it's just being picked on. 4 months in isolation you'd think it would improve not get worse if it were an injury.
- Fresh clean water... Switched it to remineralized rodi water to rule out any form of contaminates
- High quality foods with vitamins. It eats like a pig and poops normally.
I'd also like to note that it was in a tank full of other fragile and/or very expensive cichlids none of which have any issue like this. The acara is the only one. So it's not spreading as far as I know. And I always quarantine all my fish.
So what should I do?
Is there a different parasite treatment I should try? Am I just blind and missing something obvious? I'm more of a saltwater person, so freshwater diseases still stump me. Plus whenever you google anything about freshwater fish all that comes up is ich, lol!
I got it about 6 months ago and it looked like a normal EBA nothing special. Did my usual basic 3 week quarantine (salt+observation, meds as needed) and he came out fine and went in the display.
Over the next about month, it started slowly turning white like this. Acts normal and eats the whole time.
This is how it looks now
It's never improved since then. Also has not grown and it's belly has stayed sunken in even though it eats a ton.
I took it out and had it in the quarantine for about 4 months. Over the 4 months, I treated it (not necessarily at the same time but just at different intervals) with the following...
- Salt, going up as high as 1.003sg at one point
- Metroplex dosing for about 2 weeks
- Prazipro, tank dosing for 2 weeks, then mixing it in with food for about 2 weeks after that. Was seeing normal poops. I still am thinking it's internal parasites, just must not be any 'normal' kind... And I know the way I was doing it was right, I assume, because i was treating my goldfish in another tank the same way and it successfully dewormed her.
- Seachem stress guard, basically every few days on and off
- Isolation, to rule out that it's just being picked on. 4 months in isolation you'd think it would improve not get worse if it were an injury.
- Fresh clean water... Switched it to remineralized rodi water to rule out any form of contaminates
- High quality foods with vitamins. It eats like a pig and poops normally.
I'd also like to note that it was in a tank full of other fragile and/or very expensive cichlids none of which have any issue like this. The acara is the only one. So it's not spreading as far as I know. And I always quarantine all my fish.
So what should I do?
Is there a different parasite treatment I should try? Am I just blind and missing something obvious? I'm more of a saltwater person, so freshwater diseases still stump me. Plus whenever you google anything about freshwater fish all that comes up is ich, lol!
ty luck as you can get, but we have all been there in some sort at some point. Keep trucking.