[Killietalk] Help! SJOs with dropsy?

[RuevenM at aol_com]

Hi Ronnie,

     I have never seen a fish recover from dropsy but today's drugs may work. 
I have found from over 35 years of experience that all Fundulopanchax are 
prone to developing dropsy and the usual cause is overfeeding with tubifex, beef 
heart, bloodworms or black worms. These fish along with Callopanchax are prone 
to becoming fat and are usually real food pigs. Fat fish seem to develop 
dropsy for some reason. It's a balance to feed them enough rich food to get lots 
of fertile eggs while not making them fat. Chopping all worms is a good start 
as chopped ones are MUCH easier to digest. Only feeding rich foods like worms 
for pre-spawning conditioning is a good move while using daphnia, brine shrimp, 
flakes, mosquito larvae and fruit flies for a regular day to day diet. I feed 
the rich foods for a week or 2 before I set up the breeders in a spawning 
tank and then I only feed the rich foods maybe 3-4 times in that conditioning 
period and I feed only enough so the bellies round a little bit. I hope this 
helps.

Bobby

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