# Electric Blue Jack Dempsey Twitching Head



## rott62 (Jan 6, 2008)

Hello, I have a 120 gal amazon tank with assorted plecos and catfish, I have also added a couple of young Electric Blue Jack Dempsey a couple of mounths ago. one of them I have noticed is twitching his head quit offen and ocacianally rubbing his gill on a clay pot in the tank, his health appearance looks good and no other fish seem to be doing this.
from reading diffrent posts it sounds like it could be gill fluke.

Is their any danger in treating for this if this is not the proublem?
could it be contasious to the other fish?
should I treat the entire tank or put him into a diffrent tank for treatment?
If i treat the entire tank what would be the safest Med to use with the plecos and cats?

My ph is 6.6 and kh is 4 ,I have a automatic water change setup on it which replaces the 120 gal around once a week ,with a 1 part RO water to a 2 part well water drip, filtered through peat. nitrite is at 0.


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## cichlidaholic (Dec 7, 2005)

There is no danger in treating the tank for gill flukes, unless you have real plants involved.

If it is gill flukes, all the fish have been exposed and all should be treated.

Praziquantel is a good med to use for gill flukes, but I'm not sure how tolerant the plecos and catfish will be towards it. You might also note that any med you use for gill flukes should be used for a month rather than following the package directions. Gill flukes are very hard to get rid of. I would also do daily water changes on any tank I suspected gill flukes in.

However...

What you are describing with your EBJD sounds like early warning signs that many of us have seen with them...The twitching behaviour is sometimes followed by erratic swimming and darting around the tank, so much so that it eventually becomes a danger to the fish.

If you start treatment and it worsens, you may have no choice but to move him.


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