On Saturday morning I woke up to find my Metriaclima pyrsonotos male struggling at the surface. He seemed to be unable to swim properly and was biting at the air. More worrying still he was so immobile that I was able to catch him with my bare hands! I quickly looked over him and their appeared to be some darkening round the underside of his belly which was also a little swollen and he had a very inflamed anus. I put him in a bucket with an air stone straight away but within 30 minutes he deteriorated very badly, lost the ability to stay upright and died.
I’m not usually too bothered about loosing a fish, its part and parcel of the hobby, but this was different. It seemed such a shame for this fish from come all the way from Malawi just to keel over in my tank. He was just starting to settle into the tank, and was beginning to show excellent colour too. Unfortunately I never managed to get a decent photo of him. Here he is in a coloured down state:
And this is what he looked like when coloured up (this is pic of a wild one taken by Ad Konigs):
I think now its obvious why I was so sad to loose this fish!
It was important to work out what happened to the fish, so I examined the body….
WARNING SOME AQUARISTS MAY FIND THE FOLLOWING PICTURES DISTURBING
Cichlid Diary 