# small red dots on Labidochromis caeruleus Ruarwe Orange Lab



## bobby-hobby (Jan 29, 2019)

Hi
I need a bit of help but first a little background...
I had a tank about 10 years ago with some livebearers and Cory... after about an year when I moved from this apartment tank was sold... do not even remember how big it was, somewhere between 30 and 55 gallons... so do not have too much fish keeping experience...
About 6 months ago my kids were asking for a dog or cat... my wife said NO... so we settled on fish tank...
A guy nearby was looking to get rid of his tank with fishes and I went and bought it. He told me he had them for about 10 years, some special breed from Africa which likes rock and that they are easy to keep, change water every 2-3 weeks and some new fish will pop up every once in a while. The next day when I start googling all African fishes I decide they are yellow labs or at least very similar, but mine were orange... read somewhere light could be tricky and so they may just appear orange, so went to a Petsmart and ask if they know about orange labs. NO, but they have yellow ones... I bought a small yellow one and then when it start swimming in my tank there was no doubt - mine were orange. Some a bit more orange than others, some with very faint dark vertical stripes, but they were not yellow. Anyway, my kids insisted of adding more fishes - these labs are kind of shy and often are in the rocks, so aquarium is a bit boring... so after about 2 months there were 6-7 tiger barbs, 6-7 giant danios, rainbow shark, convict cichlid, jack dempsey cichlid, 2 auratus (females), maybe some other too... for 4 months all these fishes lived together in this 55 gal tank without big issues - rainbow shark will chase the barbs sometimes, auratus will chase the labs, dominant lab (4+ inches) will chase all other males and females labs and so on. I read that with so many fishes I need more filtration, got canister filter instead of hang on the back one, then sponge filter. No sick fishes, no dead fishes - except one. 3.5-4 inches male had ulcer - read about salt dips, so I did that and fish was OK... after a month same fish another ulcer - another salt dip, life goes on. After another month - just this fish - again ulcer... this time got 10 gal tank, and after 30 min in salt water I moved it there - alone. After a month all 3 ulcers are gone except the scars. Fish is eating well, moving well...
One morning I saw one lab is not eating, then next day again is hiding and not eating... read a bit more in the NET, learnt they are mouthbrooders - with a flashlight I saw something in the mouth so after few days when I was changing the water I got the female and put it a breeder. Jan 5th got about 10-12 fry, found another one holding, after 3 days another 10-15 fry... I decided to add another tank, some local girl sold me 60 gal one, so I moved all females and few small (under 3 inches) males to the new tank with newly bought acei (so in this 60 gal I have about 15 labs and 7-8 acei) and 4-5 big males (4+ inches) are still in the 55 gal. In a 30 gal one I moved the tiger barbs and the convict... 
This was 20 days ago and tank was running smooth... almost no aggression, the dominant male mated with one of the females all was OK - till 4 days ago when I saw one of the females (which gave me 15 or so fry a month ago) not eating. Next morning I examined with flashlight and saw red dots on the body, google it - nothing. Salt dip then moved it in a 10 gal tank - red spots were gone after 2 days, fish was looking normal again, start eating... yesterday morning it was dead... So when I did that 4 days I also changed more than 50% of the water in this 60 gal tank... this morning 2 more females are not eating and one has same red rash... and I really do not want to loose any more fishes. I have 30+ fry which for now is good... Went and bought a API test kit - 1st one which I am using for these 6 months. 
*PH - 8, Amonia - 0, Nitrites - 0, Nitrates - color is somewhere between 5 and 10. 74F to 76F temperature. All water is treated for chlorine and chloramines with Prime Aquarium Water Conditioner every time. * Diet - Tetra flakes, Hikari Cichlid Gold Pellets, Hikari Tropical Algae Wafers, last few days 2 times I gave them some powder algae which had to be boiled first to form a gel...
Some photos bellow. Click for full size. So any suggestions?? 
This is the 1st fish with a spot on the forehead - already dead.


Second one which is still alive as of now (2.5-3 inches) - correction, it is dead too I just check the tank! 7 -8 hours after the salt dip and less than 2 days after stop eating. 



And the male with new (4th) ulcer, when facing left there is a spot close to the tail - 3rd one, when facing right middle of the body is the 2nd scar, you can see one of the spines on the dorsal fin is going sideways on the last photo - this happened when 1st ulcer healed.


----------



## beachtan (Sep 25, 2008)

EDIT: oh my - just realized this is months old... did you get things sorted out?  alright. So the red dots of sepsis on your fish looks like a secondary problem has taken hold due to low immunities from stress. Sometimes you wont see certain fish being bullied - happens when no one's looking  but if you can, get rid of that convict cichlid. Those can be rogues. Your "orange" labs are probably red zebras (if they have black on the dorsal then they are likely a hybrid of a red zebra + yellow lab) Having just a few of this and a few of that makes breeding tricky - you can get them mixing and end up with junk babies unfortunately. If you want to breed, then you need to keep bigger groups of fish together that do not look alike. Mbuna often will interbreed throwing brownish fry that you dont want to distribute. Thats why so many cichlid keepers will talk about MTS - multi-tank syndrome. Cuz theres so many cool fish and you want to breed them so you keep buying more tanks!! Back to your yellow labs for now= how many have the red dots? and which tank are they in and with which tankmates?


----------

