jackp

the weekend didn't go very well. i'm really struggling to get bruce to eat anything, and when he does eat he throws up most of it. he's lost a lot of wieght now and looks like a skeleton in a fur coat. i honestly don't know what else i can do. i spent the weekend buying damn near every food option available. I've tied dried, canned, raw, freezedried as well as cooking meals for him. he still seems to be happy, but then how can i know for sure. i can't shake the feeling that i'm fighting a losing battle. the thought of him slowly starving to death is hideous, but at the same time when do i draw the line. he's been my best friend and companion, helped me through some pretty rough times, and i have to do right by him. the problem is i just don't know what it is i should do

It's the holiday romance that you want to watch out for :lol:

my skinny little fella is curled up asleep at my feet whilst I watch the rugby. as the game started i got up to get another beer and returned to find him polishing of the last of my dinner (chilli con carne). Ordinarily this would result in a telling off and prompt ejection from the house. tonight, however, it brought a smile to my face and he was given a bowl of his own which he also finished (luckily I was low on crushed chillies so it was a mild brew). I don't know if this means he's on the mend, but for the moment he looks pretty happy and i'll take that.

Having read some of the posts on that forum (must admit got a bit bored of reading the same thing over and over), I have decided that they were right Henward. in fact, they aren't taking it far enough. I thought about ways of improving the colour of my africans. I do have a blue bulb on the tank currently, but this is not enough. I tried painting some of them with poster paint, but the results weren't very good. I have now decided to make lycra "suits" for my fish. this way I will have some of the most brightly coloured peacocks the world has ever seen. better still I can have multiple "outfits" for my fish so I can change their colours as my mood changes. i can't wait for the prestige to come flooding in as people see my fluorescent purple and pink demasonis. perhaps even glow in the dark synodontis. after all this is just my high quality grooming that is resulting in brightly coloured fish, not unnatural or deceptive at all.

thanks so much for all the support guys. Bruce has slipped a bit in the last few days. while the antibiotics seem to be dealing with the pneumonia, he has a lot of fluid buildup in his trachea and lungs. I took him back to the vet today and got some medication that will hopefully help him move the fluid. he's refusing to eat again, but hopefully once his new pills kick in he will have more of an appetite. i've gotta say it gets me pretty down when he's like this, but we've got through it before and i'm sure we can do it again.

I struggled all weekend to get Bruce to eat anything. He turned down raw and cooked mince, which came as a surprise as he would normally wolf it down. He then turned down sirloin steak (raw and cooked). Meanwhile I have been living off baked beans on toast. After work today I went into the butcher and got some of the pet mince that they do (minced chicken carcasses). At $4 per kg it is much more reasonable than what I have been feeding and it's passed the first test, he ate it. Hopefully he will do better on the new diet. I'll stick to the chicken mince for the moment, but will eventually introduce a bit of beef mince/hearts/kidney etc.

once the food hits his stomach he is fine. the problem is he tends to get inflamation in his oespophagus which increases the chance of infection. However, I may just have to do it and be careful where I get his food from. Thanks DonnaM, I will check out the K9 Natural food. On the bright side Bruce is definitely responding well to the antibiotics. Until he has fully recovered I won't be able to tell what food will work well for him as he tends to be much worse when he has pneumonia

Thought I'd update this thread as a bit has happened since i last posted. At the start of the year I built what is called a Bailey chair for Bruce (basically a box that holds him in an upright position). I have been cooking and pureeing food which I feed him in his Bailey chair 3 times a day and leave him in the chair for 20 mins after feeding. Using this method I managed to get him up to 34-35kg. I thought I had sussed it. Sadly he has recently stopped tolerating the cooked food. I tried changing the ratios of the ingredients i was using but to no benefit. I tried the tinned "casserole" food again, which he seemed to go ok on, however he has now developed pneumonia again (his regurgitation can cause infections in his windpipe leading to pneumonia). I've got him on antibiotics and am having to hand feed him cooked chicken breast as he won't eat anything else. I am hoping that once the pneumonia is dealt with I can get him eating other foods again (1.2kg of chicken breast a day gets pretty expensive). I've had him in at the vet a couple of times, but he has told me there is nothing he knows of that I can do that I'm not already doing. I am thinking about trying raw feeding, however it is not without risk. Raw feeding comes with the risk of salmonella etc. Not so much an issue for a healthy dog as their digestive systems are set up to deal with raw and possibly contaminated meat. With Bruce however the risk is higher as he quite often has an inflamed oesophagus which makes him prone to infections. Unfortunately I am running out of options. He is currently down to 31kg. As I say, once the pneumonia is dealt with he may come right. Here's hoping.

should have stayed out of this thread. saw phill collis was selling the last of his apistogramma eunotus on trademe. now i have another tank set up in the lounge

Keys

Imagine living in a house with a 1.5m stud height

Bacon

Sorry mate didn't read your original post properly and assumed you wanted to reduce frequency of water changes. That said, discus prefer a tank with more height than the one you intend to use. Doesn't mean it won't work, just not ideal.

discus need really good water quality. if you're not into water changes they aren't the way to go in my opinion. also wouldn't put them in that tank

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=57399

Astroturf

start a new thread specifically asking about plants.

and when they stop moving it's usually too late to help them. (Just clarifying my previous sarcasm)

so while your fish is eating and swimming he is happy. when he stops doing that you will get him a bigger tank. nothing wrong with that logic at all......

you can just use low light plants like jave fern etc. not that flash on plants myself but there's plenty of people on here that will point you in the right direction.

I reckon a nice planted tank with a few caves and some dift wood. A few apistos, some bristlenoses, a school of tetras and maybe a few other fish. I'd love to do one myself, but i'm kind of restricted to 1 tank at the moment.

would make a nice planted apisto tank

Labyrinth

Keep an eye out on trademe as well. Would stick with dwarf cichlids if I were you. Demasonis and electric yellows need a bigger tank.

http://s1122.photobucket.com/albums/l540/jackp88/?action=view&current=IMG_1753.jpg http://s1122.photobucket.com/albums/l540/jackp88/?action=view&current=IMG_1744.jpg