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African Cichlid with Hole in the head2007-11-24 23:09:28

He's a 5 inch orange Parrot fish and is gorgeous. We are doing the water changes in between medicine treatments (the carbon is pulled out of the filter) and have raised the temp a few degrees. Anything else we should be doing? We love him and really don't want him to die. Right now he still has a strong appetite, I'm taking that as a good sign

Answers:

Hole in the Head Disease (HITH) is difficult to properly treat and appears to have several different components that should all be addressed to cure the disease. First, be sure you are treating with something that will specificall treat for Heximitia. Flagyl (metronidazole) is an excellent choice.

Second, superior water quality is critical in the fishes recovery. Be sure that you keep the water as clean as possible with very low ammonia, nitrites and other waste products. Large, frequent water chanegs will be the best way to handle this.

Third, your fish needs a very complete and varied diet. Diet seems to play an important roll in the recovery from HITH. Be sure to use a good quality basic pellet as the staple part of the fishes diet, but also feed it generously with a wide variety frozen foods. Variety and freshness are both important, so if you have any live foods available in your area, add those to it's diet as well.

Don't expect this disease to be cured in a week or two. Many times successful treatment and full recovery requires months.

MM

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I would say that you are doing good and should keep it up. The only thing that I think you should add to what you are doing is making sure the African Cichlid is getting a good varied diet of a good quality pellet food, live or frozen foods, and veggies.