Conventional wisdom from the Cheni profile suggests that territorial fights are non-fatal as they don't have the equipment to significantly damage each other. I would like to get some opinions from the experts on whether the damage that can be seen on the dead fish can be put down to fighting or if i am missing something more alarming.
First off all water parameters are 7.5 pH 0 ammonia 0 nitrite ~50ppm Nitrate (damn that tap water!) in a tank that is horribly overstocked (yes, the Cheni keep breeding and the tank was too small to start with). We have owned this loach for about 18 months and there have not been any new introductions to the tank in the past 10 moths. The last thing added to the tank was some new plants around 2 months ago. I can well imagine that the overcrowding in the tank has added to the stress an Alpha loach has to deal with requiring them to spend more time chasing rivals and defending territory. Not ideal conditions.
Over the past couple of days the loach had been acting in an agitated manner and was more active in defending his territory than usual, we put this down to the fact that our two mature females are both gravid at the moment and looking to spawn. If this is significant i don't know.
When i found the body this morning he had a distinctly roughed up look to him with parts of his tubercles appearing to be lose, colour wise he appeared to have a pale head in line with the war paint effect seen when fighting however i can not comment on if this is just natural fading post-mortem.
On removing the body and closer inspection i noted that there seems to be damage located between the pelvic fins and the anus:
Here is a full body shot (click on the image for a full sized copy):
Unfortunately i'm not experienced enough to make any judgements on this so would greatly appreciate hearing other opinions.
Thanks for your time,
LES..
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to fix links.
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