Spitting out flakes in the morning

[confused_aquarist]

So when I had stable breeding colonies of annulatus, here is what I did. We can compare notes.

That is so funny because only 2 out of 18 I raised from eggs turned out to be males, I keep them at 22 Celsius since egg stage.

The day that I got them from online shopping last July, only 1 female was eating a little bit of daphnia. I stopped feeding daphnia because they started scratching the moment I put daphnia in there which leads me to suspect it was never a gill fluke issue but it still resolved with flubendazole, so oh well, I really could care less now.

Four of the non-eating killied died within just a couple of days, so I got 5 more from another store, quarantined them alone, and 1 male got bullied by alpha male and died during quarantine. After getting bullied I had placed this one into another tank for quarantine and it never recovered, became anorexic and floated and died. When I mixed the remaining 4 with the remaining 1 from initial batch the alpha male died from swollen gill and the initial female got what I thought was hexamita and got anorexic for maybe 3 weeks, floated belly up for another 2 weeks got swim bladder issue and recovered in the following 2 weeks. This female had 3 offspring I never collected any eggs from her afterwards, one of them was the male that died last December from swollen gill. The other surviving male/females produced a lot of offspring, I collected 15 eggs and all hatched and grew fine.

Last November I started to mix offspring with parents and that's when problem restarted. Following 1 month of relative peace the 1 juvenile male I introduced from November batch got bullied by alpha male (it was only a tail nip. It recovers within the same day...), I didn't take it seriously and it started to hide under a log. I quarantined it then it started flashing and got anorexic and floated and died.

I started flubendazole treatment in mid-January to tackle the gill scratching problem that has been going on ever since feeding of daphnia, I did this because I didn't want any more individual to die from gill issue. After 2 weeks into treatment never again flashing behavior from any fish. I'm continuing the treatment for 4 weeks just in case. Maybe their immune system is so weak that they cannot deal with any parasite on their own.

In terms of raising them I just raise them using tap, pH 6.8 maybe 40 ppm GH. I use very clean water feeding fry with paramecium since day 1 switch to brine shrimp and flakes from day 7 never had any of them die. Male start to develop male characteristics on day 40 first with gill cover becoming blue. They are adorable when young.

Last week I notice a female juvenile from the later batch hiding and lethargic, quarantined and treated, got a little better, then got a lot worse. It has had chronic cotton mouth for 2 months and 2 days ago the chronic cotton mouth turned into a chondroma. (As a side note, all of the 4 adult parents have chronic cotton mouth. None except for this 1 juvenile has had it.)

Sorry that this again turned out to be long and a bore, but here's where it becomes a question post again:
In my main tank now, I often see odd behavior during feeding- I feed brine shrimp with a pipette, and most eat right from it, they definitely do not have a reserved personality in regards to feeding. Some individuals though, eat some, then run away and come back to eat more, and run away again and repeat (including alpha male which definitely never gets bullied). I am not sure whether this is just foraging behavior or odd illness behavior. They can eat a lot, it just takes time to feed them because I have to chase them around with pipette.

 

[GaryE]

I think the problem is birds. That's their main predator, and they are hard wired to fear anything passing over the water. Instinct stays. I always keep Epiplatys on my top rack tanks, which are at standing eye level.

I wasn't able to see see E huberi feeding in Gabon. Their streams were fast, and they seemed to dart out of the overhanging bushes to grab food, but stay under cover otherwise. The buses a few cm over the water were loaded with small spiders, and I suspect the falling spiders and flies were their food. Plus there were fire ants falling from bushes that arched right across the water and served as bridges. The locals warmed me so I wouldn't get stung.

I expect it's the same for annulatus. Dart out, grab food, take cover.

 

[confused_aquarist]

I think the problem is birds. That's their main predator, and they are hard wired to fear anything passing over the water. Instinct stays. I always keep Epiplatys on my top rack tanks, which are at standing eye level.

This actually does make a lot of sense, though it's mysterious to me why only certain individuals have this behavior others don't. They'd eat some and when they run away they always run towards the darker spots in the tank. I guess it would make sense since food only falls where there is no cover.

Comparing with your notes I can be absolutely sure that I don't have a right setup for them and it could be contributing to stress (not much plants or top hiding space etc.), but it's a trade-off because of the disease issues and well-planted tanks are just so difficult to clean. I would love to have an actual naturally-looking tank if I can confirm that the last batch of juveniles that I have are disease-free, but that's hard. I can't tell until they show up sick.