Botia sidthimunki with round belly. Sick or with eggs?

[kwindo]

Hi there. I have been reading a lot on this forum as a guest. Worries about my Dwarf Loaches made me register.

I have 10 Dwarf Loaches in my tank. They are just wonderfull, very lively and as far as I can tell behaving like Loaches should.

This morning I noticed at least 2 of my Loaches have a mush rounder belly. I'm am very new to the aquarium hobby (about 3 months) but I allready had some Perl Danios with Dropsy some weeks ago but I don't think my Loaches have Dropsy. Appart from the round belly they behave normally and eat well. Still I'm worried.

I tried to make some pictures. Sorry I can't get them more detailed.





Has someone seen this before?
Thanks.

BTW: English is not my native language. How do you call a female fish with eggs. "being gravid"?

[NancyD]

That doesn't look like my females, they are fat over a longer area. Yours look more like maybe overeating or constipation to me. You can try fasting them for a few days or just offering veggies like zucchini (cougette) or thawed frozen de-skinned peas although my sids aren't too into veg. Good luck!

[kwindo]

Thanks for your reply Nancy

Your probably right, now I also think they just ate to mush. I haven't fed them today and I' m under the impression there belly's aren't so big any more.

I try to give my fish a variation of foods like. Micorpallets, Daphnia, Bactotabs, veggy flakes and whatever I can find that they seem to like. I've also noticed my loaches especially like the non veggy stuff. Also, they got rid off all my snails in less then a week so I suppose they must be meat eaters