# Sick - Lid



## Murloc (Jul 26, 2012)

I have a nice pair of West African Cichlids that I got a week or so ago, and they have been very happy and healthy up until now. I bought them as a par, and now one of them is having issues. I have pics below, but they he hides so much I am going to have to describe what his condition is a little. It has lost a lot of it's coloration. Not like when fish are stressed and get lighter, but is dark, very dark. His eyes were frosted over a bit, but that has subsided. It isn't eating, and prefers to hide alone remaining inactive. 

The only thing to change in the last day or so is this; I added a carbon pad in front of the out take of my filter. I did this to help grab some partials that were floating around. I did rinse it first, very well. But I fear me may have eaten some of it. I don't know if that would cause him to get sick or not, but it sounds like it would. I removed the pad to be safe. 

*Water parameters:* 

Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - 5ppm
pH - 7.2
Temp - 80 - 82*F


Here is the pair ( _Pelvicachromis pulcher_ ), and their normal coloration over a week ago:









Some shots I could get today:
















The flash was on so that is reflection in his eye, not it frosted over.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

krib like many cichlids have an amazing amount of color change they can do. The fish have a normal color, a stressed color, a courting color, a guarding fry color,etc. Search images and videos and you can often find out which are which.

These are fish where the female is often the aggressive one and sometimes you need to pull a male to save his life. Breeders add extra females to give the dominant one something to abuse other than the male. They can be deadly to each other and territorial when spawning, but ignore most fish not in the same (pelvicachromis ) genus.


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## Murloc (Jul 26, 2012)

Cool, thanks for the info, I will check it out!


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