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Weird frontosa behaviour


shannon

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Hi all,

Since changing my tank around a couple of weeks ago my Mpimbwe frontosa has been swimming around with his throat swollen almost as if holding a batch of fry. This isn't possible because 1 it's a male judging by growth rate compared to the other one I have from the same batch and 2 it's only 11cm.

It has me a little concerned as he isn't smashing food like before and it's been a couple of weeks now. I caught him this morning to see if anything was caught in his throat and all he did was spit crushed coral into the net but continue holding his mouth as if mouth brooding.

Anyone encounter this before?

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Hi Shannon,

Just for the records male frontosa do hold eggs on occasion! i bought a colony of 7 bars about a month ago and one of the females was holding and when we caught the male out he was also holding about 20 eggs!!

As far as your problem goes i'm not sure what it is but i have heard of frontosa eating prawns etc and holding it in their mouth for weeks at a time, which is obviously bad for the fish as it is clearly rotten by then.

Cheers,

Damo

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Yeah I've heard of males holding too but the fact that he is tiny and the female even smaller I knew there were no eggs in the tank so I'm at a loss as to what he is doing.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Shannon,

I have seen this quite a lot and every experience I have ever had has always been juvenile fish.. I have seen it mainly in Malawis though, this is the first I have heard in Frontosa.. I dont know the exact reason behind it but I have found that after a water change and gravel clean, I would normally feed the fish and in the rush for the food, some of them would collect a mouth full of substrate and hold onto it..

This was happening a lot in a tank full of juvenile Ps. Saulosi. All fry were 4-5cm and after feeding one time, about 4 of them looked as if they were holding.. I thought it was food but they were still holding after 3 days so I decided to check on them. Same thing happened, they spat it out when I had them in the net..

I havent seen it long term though.. How is your Frontosa now?? If he has still got some substrate in his mouth, he may think that it is a batch of eggs and definately wont be eating like he normally would..

Personally, I would try and catch him again try and empty his mouth of whatever is in there.. Im sure he will spit it out eventually though!

Cheers..

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