Flower horn sick after feeding pork....Please help!   5/1/11
Hi,
I am Suresh from India. I have a 1year old Flower horn. She is normally very active & a voracious eater. But 3 days back I fed her pork after which she does not eat at all & is not active. She sits at the bottom of the tank most of the time. She also has developed a small bulge in the abdomen. I came to know after referring the net that pork is not suitable for flower horns'¦but what do I do now to make her well. Please help as I don't want to lose her.
Thanks
Suresh
<Greetings, Suresh. Hope you've learned your lesson here! Do not, Do Not, DO NOT give bird or mammal meat to aquarium fish -- EVER! In short, mammal and bird meats congeal inside cold-blooded animals, and in doing so, cause them varying degrees of harm. Of course some cold-blooded animals are adapted to dealing with such prey, like snakes, but not your cichlid. Your cichlid should be fed a mix of pellet foods, cooked peas, spinach, and small invertebrates such as earthworms. For now, you just have to wait and see what happens. Don't feed her until her belly comes back to normal. When she does start eating, give her just cooked peas (squashing the peas as well sometimes helps) -- peas are excellent laxatives for fish. You can also use Epsom salt (magnesium sulphate; not cooking salt, i.e., sodium chloride!) at 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons will help a good deal by loosening the muscles of the gut, reducing swelling. But that's about all you can do. Cheers, Neale.>