smidey

they aren't patches as in raw areas or anything like that, more like blood vessels closer to the scales. i was think an internal parasite as they aren't showing much sign of sickness except for their behaviour. it's not aggression damage. he has been steadily loosing them, nothing he does seems to stop it.

A couple of years ago i gave some e yellow, red zeb & peacock fry to a friend who is now 13. in the last 8 weeks or so he has been steadily loosing fish. I have never had many fish die of sickness & i am a bit lost on what is causing this due to my fortunate lack of experience with sick fish. I think it is an internal parasite that is affecting their swimbladder as the tank is well set up, the water conditions are all fine & in the last two years everything has been fine & nothing has changed recently. they die shortly (12 hours) after the following actions: swimming on their sides, swimming in a corkscrew manner, they get red blood lines along or in patches on their body. he has treated the tank with drontal & melafix, he feeds top quality foods & keeps up regular maintenance on the tank. he does have them in a small tank & when the deaths began there were far to many fish in the tank but that has now been rectified.

i would think the fish that isn't well is being harassed by one or the other fish, with the tank being so small it has no where to go although you have plenty of hiding places. they can be nasty, i had a group get along fine for around 2 years then with in 2 weeks the male had killed 3 females. i think the only other thing that hasn't been mentioned is tank temp, what is it & is the heater big enough to keep the tank up to temp at night?

you can buy them from payless plastics

i always put more than 1/4 water, more like 1/2 fill the bag.

it is a nice fish. if you compare adult pics of both you will see why & that is a pic of a juvie. here's a empress juvie & the adult colouration of each is very similar

do you think it is unjustified or do you believe peoples opinions?

tropheus! import some rainbows & breed heaps & make them cheap.

if they get more experienced people they will need to pay them more, then there will be threads about how much everything costs at the LFS. do your own research so you already have some idea of what you want/need or prepare to accept that persons opinion, good or bad.

it is our job to manage our stock & the chances of getting sick fish are high no matter where we get them from, i doubt they knowingly sold you sick fish so unfortunately it's just as much your responsibility.

The Chopper Boys by Rex Forrester is a great read about how the deer hunting evolved & the nutters that were involved in hunting & catching deer in NZ . Some awesome tales of accidents & amazing survival stories.

welcome, what malawis have you got?

i would suggest that most fish big enough to eat fry will do so. i have lost fry when housing them with clown loaches in the past as well.

paul's man isn't as strong as him :lol:

you have a snail problem with africans? my non trophs eat them. how about a few clown loaches?

welcome, great you could join us.

nice work, i heard the other day a good way is to cook it at the temp you intend to eat it for 48 hours. failing that roast it like a beef roast & should be moist & drain as much or all off the blood out to reduce the strength of the "gamie" flavour. on a bbq is best.

not a bad slug for 18 :lol:

interesting

i was told you had to report all accidents, accidents with injuries immediately & accidents with no injuries had to be done within 24 hours.

if you get charged with careless driving, you are supposed to be in any crash automatically, they generally order you to do a st johns driving course or similar. did you report your crash?

so you haven't done a court ordered driving course then? Hoon or Careless? :lol:

good idea, a sponge will clog quickly & reduce flow massively.

the sunsun comes with the plant growing t5's, i don't know what rating the tubes are as i don't care about plants because the africans destroy them. i prefer the sunsun over the aquaone as the hoods are aluminium, the hood has gaps for canister piping & the cabinets are made from foil wrapped panels which is alot better at keeping water out than the melteca with 0.4mm clashing strips.

i can recommend sunsun tanks, i have had one for three years or so & it's great.