Apisto Cac trying to eat but spitting

[Sime76]

Hi Folks
I recently got a Cacatuoides Orange Flash pair. Had
them for about 4or 5 weeks now and they seem to be going ok. But the
Male seems to be having trouble eating. He seems fine is pretty active
and always tries to eat, comes up to the front when I feed them. When
I feed - frozen Brine for example he munches on them for a while then
spits them out he has a few more goes but no luv. His belly doesn't
seem to enlarge after feeding so I don't think he isn't getting much
food. The only other thing I have seen is a couple of days ago he was
passing some very loose opaque white poo . It was not long stringy and white like you'd normally see from a sick fish.
Do you have any ideas if there is a problem here? I'm a little concerned.

Sime

[Merrilyn]

Sime, I never like to hear a fish has white opaque poo. It's not a good sign. It means the fish is shedding the lining of the gut. They normally do shed some lining every day, but for it to show up as white, there has to be a lot of lining in there.

Now, several reasons a fish can shed the lining, but it is usually due to an irritation of the gut, caused by either an infection, or worms. You need to observe this fish closely, and see if the problem is diet related (there is not a lot of nourishment in frozen brine shrimp, it's mainly shell and water).

Try some of the other foods, like pellets or flake, and perhaps frozen blood worm, and see if there is any improvement.

[Sime76]

He will eat live BS, I bought some today from my LFS and watched him eat some which is encouraging.

I've tried Tetra colour bits and similar but he spits those too or they pop out the gills.

I will try some frozen BW, although I'm a bit reluctant to feed this as it is known to irritate dwarfs' guts.

[Ben]

Hi Sime76,
i know this is a little unorthadox, but i have been feeding my api agassizi live clean black worms?

They seem to love them as part of thier diet.

keep us posted on the little guy's progress.

cheers,
Ben

[goldfish]

where can u get this live clean black worms?..is it really clean?

[Ben]

I buy them from my LFS, they get them specially in for me, i pay $50 for 500grams.
When they get delivered to the shop i am there within 15 minutes to pick them up, so unlike other stores they are not sitting in a bowl and dieing.

I dont feed them to my discus though, but have done in the past.

never had problems with them, but i flush/purge them for a couple of days before feeding them to my dwarfs.

Cheers,
Ben

[Sime76]

ok he's eating frozen blood worm but thats about it. Tonight I notice a little bit of almost clear poop hanging out his bum, probably another bad sign. Should I be treating the tank? with Parzi or something??

[mcloughlin2]

I have had african cichlids chew food a bit then spit it out...

I thnk it is their way of softening the food..

Though maybe a bit of research should be done just in case coz unless im wrong orange flash's can be quite expensive....


Cheers,
Sam