hi guys,

I have a 1year old chocolate cichlid, he has "grown" what look like white whiskers on his lower jaw just beneath his lip, there are 3 of them and there about 2mm each but don`t appear to be causing him any distress.
I`m not sure wether there parasitic or not but they appeared over night.My water parameters and tank mates are all fine so i`m in a bit of a quandary on what to do?.
Any suggestions?

Can you get a photo of the fish or draw a pic to show roughly what these white whiskers look like roughly?

It sounds like the "white whiskers" could be either mouth rot or body fungus. It could also be an external worm parasites of some sort too (there's one which sounds similar to your description, although for now i completely forget its name, meh).

 choco_002.jpg ( 19.58K ) Number of downloads: 6
 choco_001.jpg ( 17.29K ) Number of downloads: 2


hi...

Thanks for the reply... hope these pics help if they don`t let me know and i`ll try to get better ones!!, sorry the water looks a bit green but i put a dose of "esha 2000" in to see if it would help out!

I would say it is a fungal infection of the mouth, treating the fish with "Anti fungus and finrot" by Interpet should do the trick to clear it up .

How often do you do water changes on the tank and how much do you take out on average?

This post has been edited by Tokis-Phoenix: Aug 8 2007, 11:23 AM

hi...

I do about 30% once a week and a major clean once every 3 weeks ie: vac the gravel and clear the algae ect ect. i`ve started a course of "esha 2000" combined with "esha hexamita" so i`m hoping they will cover all angles on both the fungal and parasite fronts.

thanks!!

Sounds good to me, good luck with the esha hexamita treatment .