dimple on body

[skoom]

I notice my 2'' red melon has a shallow dimple on both sides of its body, around the size of half a shirt button. Otherwise he is eating, growing and pooing well. Should I be concerned?

Many thanks.

skoom

[Bill T.]

I have seen this before, in some fish at my lfs and indeed with my own discus at one stage. I don't know what it is & no-one could enlighten me.

It would seem to get worse with a lot of surface feeding, so one theory is that they may be gulping air, when they disgorge the air, their abdomen collapses a bit?

Sometimes these fish would look very distressed for a while, but the symptoms pass, so if you are not looking at them a lot you may miss something.

What I did discover with my own fish was a heavy worm load. They were eating ravenously, but this "dimple" would be there, so another theory is that due to the worm load, although they would eat a lot, there was some body wasting due to poor nutrition/competition with worms for food.

I have treated big time for worms and now my two remaining discus are looking real healthy, although the treatment I used knocked them about for a while & brought on an ammonium spike for a few days.

Perhaps ladyred could add to this discourse?

[Merrilyn]

Skoom, I think Bill's theory is pretty much spot on.

Where abouts on the body is this dimple.

[skoom]

I'd love to post a photo asap...

to describe the location of the dimple....

imagine the fish is held in front of a bright light and you can see its guts as a sillouette...

the dimple is located at the back top region adjacent to the guts (not over), which pretty much marks it at the centre of the discus' round body. It is seen on both sides of the fish.

I have seen it pooh and it is not white and stringy. However I will prepare a prazi treatment as prophylaxis.

Thanks.

[Bill T.]

Yep. That describes exactly what I have observed with mine. An interesting discus phenomenon. Prazi did not change this for me. I treated with Octazin with dramatic deworming&everything effect - long pure white castings, heaps of long stringy grey to white castings, an ammonium spike and a while for them to recover, but now they look good.

Please keep up the progress reports.