# head turning black on one side



## Matt B.

a little while ago I bought 4 g1/f1 white calvus

they were all normal when I bought them.....and about a week ago....one of them suddenly turned black on one side of it's face

Here is the normal side

















and then, what it looks like from the front...it looks like the colour change is perfectly straight down the centre of his head









and, the black face side

















I have no idea what caused this.....at first I thought maybe he somehow got burnt by the heater.....or he got in a fight....but there is absolutely no damage to his eye or any of the scales, for that matter........and the black just stops at the end of the gill plate.

could it have been something I did....or didn't do?

the others are all fine.....

"two-face" (as I know refer to this fish) is perfectly fine...just the fact that one side of his face is black.......he/she eats very well (I feed NLS and mysis as a treat 1-2x per week)...swims normally....fights with the others..........if the black wasn't so obvious against the white body, I may have easily missed this.

Has anyone ever seen anything like this?......I know I havn't

is there anything I can do to fix/cure it?

thanks,
Matt


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## cichlidaholic

That's the strangest thing I've ever seen...

Maybe it's the angle of that last pic, but he looks a bit bloated???

How long has he been like this?

How long has the tank been set up?

What are the water parameters on the tank?


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## Guest

If the little guy lives, I'd call him Harvey Dent...that or just stick with Two-Face...

Either way I hope it's ok...


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## Matt B.

cichlidaholic said:


> That's the strangest thing I've ever seen...


tell me about it :lol:



cichlidaholic said:


> Maybe it's the angle of that last pic, but he looks a bit bloated???


it is probably the angle of the pic, combined with the position of his/her pelvic fins, and the fact that it's pretty blurry......but from every other angle you can see that it looks fine.



cichlidaholic said:


> How long has he been like this?


I'm not 100% sure, as I can't remember exactly when I first noticed this...but probably about 1 week - 10 days.



cichlidaholic said:


> How long has the tank been set up?


the tank has been set up for almost 2 years (I have yet to do a complete "tear down", or anything like that)...... but, the tank residents have changed a couple times
These calvus have been in the tank for a little over a month now



cichlidaholic said:


> What are the water parameters on the tank?


Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - 20-25ppm
GH - 200ppm
kH - 300ppm
pH - 8.4
Temp - 79 F

Feeding is NLS and mysis 1-2x per week.....two-face eats very well....I tried feeding mysis today to see how he reacted......he ATTACKED it.......as far as I can tell, he is perfectly healthy, aside from the 1/2 black face.



Marduk said:


> If the little guy lives, I'd call him Harvey Dent...that or just stick with Two-Face...


 :lol: that's exactly what I wanted to call him, but then I would have to explain the movie, for anyone who hasn't seen it ...and I didn't want to ramble too much.....
and everyone knows who two-face is....hes a timeless batman character....and even if someone didn't know who he was...its self explanatory

thanks for the replies

Matt


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## cichlidaholic

I'm not convinced that there is nothing wrong with this little one, but if he's behaving and eating normally, I really wouldn't know what to tell you to do!

Keep us posted on this one, if you don't mind!


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## Matt B.

well...I have had no luck in my attempts to find out what this is.....

...even if there is nothing I can do to fix it, I'm still curious to know what caused it...

do you think i might have any more luck posting this topic on another board, instead of the illness board?


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## cichlidaholic

I don't think so, but feel free to try...(Can't guarantee it won't get moved back here, though!  )

I've never had a fish develop darkened areas if they weren't sick, so at this point, I would just keep a very close eye on things. (If it were me, I'd probably isolate him, but I'm a worry wart!)

On the other hand, I'd also wonder what might happen if someone kept the white and black variant together and they crossed!


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## Matt B.

> I've never had a fish develop darkened areas if they weren't sick, so at this point, I would just keep a very close eye on things. (If it were me, I'd probably isolate him, but I'm a worry wart!)


I thought of quarantining him, but I don't have any empty tanks

someone posted a link on another forum, to this site http://en.allexperts.com/q/Fish-1472/cichlid-black-head.htm, and so far, this description fits best.

and, I think, if it was a hybrid, the whole head would be black, not just one side.....and most likely, the others would have the same issue.

and from the colour of these fish......I dont think they are a black/white cross, because they would probably be a grey colour, or at least some shade darker than they are now......as you can see in the pics, they are pretty white


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## cichlidaholic

I would agree that his answer is as good as any!

I would say the tissue on that side of the face is "necrotic", but I'd want to know why!

I hope you didn't think I was saying that they were crossed with black ones, I was just wondering out loud what they might look like if they were! :thumb:


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## klumsyninja

I found this thread doing a search, the EXACT same thing just happened to one of my Geophagus. I've been nursing it back to health from what appeared to be HITH and just when it seemed to be coming around, I come home tonight to find him looking like this.

****e.


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## cichlidaholic

Hopefully Matt B will let us know what happened with his fish!

This is something I've never seen before.

What were you treating the HITH with?


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## Matt B.

klumsyninja, I did reply to your pm

for everyone else who might be wondering,

this fish turned out fine, after a few weeks the black started gradually fading, about 2 weeks after that it was totally gone..........now I can not even tell/remember which one it was.

klumsyninja, something I just thought of now, after I sent that pm, as far as I know, I didn't do anything to trigger this problem, and it hasn't reoccurred since, but, when Kim asked how you were treating the HITH, I just realized that there may be a reason/cause of this problem..........perhaps it is a genetic mutation, in a select few fish, which may be triggered by stress?, I really don't know, just thinking out loud here

Matt


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## cichlidaholic

You guys have noticed that you're both in the same area, right???

Could it be sensitivity to something in your water?


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## Matt B.

cichlidaholic said:


> You guys have noticed that you're both in the same area, right???
> 
> Could it be sensitivity to something in your water?


 :lol: aren't you in the same area as us, too?, you may be next :lol: 

I never really thought of it, but it could be something in the water..........but like I said before, it hasn't happened since then......if it was a water issue, don't you think it would happen after every water change?


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## cichlidaholic

Matt B. said:


> cichlidaholic said:
> 
> 
> 
> You guys have noticed that you're both in the same area, right???
> 
> Could it be sensitivity to something in your water?
> 
> 
> 
> :lol: aren't you in the same area as us, too?, you may be next :lol:
> 
> I never really thought of it, but it could be something in the water..........but like I said before, it hasn't happened since then......if it was a water issue, don't you think it would happen after every water change?
Click to expand...

Water supply companies add different chemicals to the water all the time, so it varies.

And, yes, here I sit...In the middle of "black faced fish land"...


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## klumsyninja

Hey guys,

Okay so I treated my Geo with API's 'General Cure'. I kept him in water with salt afterwards then when I treated a bunch of the other fish for clout I kept him in the Hospital tank with them because the HITH was developing around his eye sockets so he received the Clout treatment too.

He also had some Metro soaked food last week. Finally, the 180G that I returned him back into on Sunday (last sunday) was treated with Prazi (it says you can leave it for 7 days, tomorrow being the 7th)

I tried everything except tetracycline to turn this guy around.

I have him in a quarantine with another one... Hopefully he turns around. But this black face thing took me by surprise

( I don't think Toronto, Hamilton, and Welland are in the same area guys.. definitely different water sources!)

My fish's circumstances are obviously way different than yours was but the symptom is the same, however nerve damage is quite possible considering the HITH and it's effects on this poor guys head.


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## Foxlarocks

Revers Michael Jackson haha

I am curious as to what this is.


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## twohuskies

Don't know whether this will help, but I got some sevs from a friend. He had 3, and the middle-sized one suddenly developed the same exact thing - half black face. He did research, and finally read that it could be stress-releated.

He had recently moved them from his 180G to a 29G  because he was converting the 180 to saltwater. The biggest sev was bullying the mid-sized one. He rehomed the largest sev, and I took the 2 others.

The black face disappeared within 2 weeks after I got her, and has not returned.

Could be all of this mystery black face is from stress bullying, or just stress. I dunno, but that was my experience.


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## klumsyninja

My Geo died yesterday morning, it went blind the day before that happened and his HITH opened up again a couple days before that.

I suspect it was still sick with the HITH internally and that caused the half black face (maybe the stress of being sick, maybe nerve damage, who knows) He developed a big black blotch on his side too.

Big guy, maybe 6-7" sad to see him go I spent a ton on meds and really got attached to him in the attempt to get him better.

I could've bought an entire other group of fish ( a couple groups actually) funny how attached we get to our little finned friends eh?

I'm relieved he's gone now it was hard to see him go through all that.


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## wicked1

This just happened to my geophagus! He's got no signs of illness. Def. not hith in my case. All the other fish are fine. nothing in the tank changed.
Does anyone have any new info on this?


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## gverde

I saw this on another forum which happened to a female buccochromis hap. I can't remember too much detail but the consensus saids that it isn't fatal. Supposedly it will go away.


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## zimmy

I just found this old thread. One of my uarus, who hasn't been eating much lately, suddenly developed the black on one side of its face. This fish has been a bit withdrawn for the last week or so and eating very little (it ate some shelled peas with gusto yesterday though). I thought it's mouth looked a bit injured when I first noticed it wasn't eating as much so that would go along with the nerve damage theory.

Strangely enough I'm in the same general area as the two other posters on the thread who had this issue (not necessarily the same water supply but odd still).


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## FishMaster43

I experienced this same condition with one of my Geo. Brachybranchus here in Australia, asked for info on my local forum and no one seemed to know. One member did suggest it could be nerve damage but after a couple of weeks it just seemed to disappear, quiet strange at the time and worrying, i have not seen it again and i have bred hundreds of offspring from this fish.


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## zimmy

I found the uaru dead today. It's odd because it had started eating again yesterday.


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## Gwenish321

Don't know how to add a photo to this but I have a 30 gallon tank full of Yellowtail acai that are about 2 months old had someone come get a few of them today and had to chase them around the tank with the net so of course it was a stressful afternoon a little while ago I noticed one had a black face on only one side some of the others are displaying their bars so I am going to guess that it could also be triggered by stress and maybe some form of coloration mutation where the bars don't become present but the face darkens I don't know just my guess this tank is a well-established 5 year old Community tank I moved the community fish into a slightly smaller tank to put the fry in there to grow out until they are large enough to rejoin the adults.
Oh, I also had this happen to my electric blue Jack Dempsey a long time ago and it did Fade with time but when he gets stressed it seems to dark and only half of his face


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## Aaron lee

cichlidaholic said:


> You guys have noticed that you're both in the same area, right???
> 
> Could it be sensitivity to something in your water?


Couldn't be that. I live in Louisiana and just seen it on our exasperatus


cichlidaholic said:


> You guys have noticed that you're both in the same area, right???
> 
> Could it be sensitivity to something in your water?


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