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My Green Terror is a problem again ...?
Again with my GT ... Anyway, my GT has stopped showing interest in his food. I have been using floating Cichlid pellets which he has gobbled up like a voracious hog since he was about an inch long (he is now about 3.5 inches).
However, I fed him some frozen blood worms the other day and since then, he refuses to eat anything else. He simply ignores the pellets.
He used to gobble up ten of them in no time, now he won't even bother with five unless they get caught in the filter flow and go scooting through the water then he's all happy to chase them and eat them.
The rest of his behavior hasn't changed, he isn't sitting on the gravel doing nothing, he isn't floating on his side, he isn't sitting in one of his caves and never coming out.
He is however showing that strange behavior I mentioned a week ago, clearing a spot on the bottom of the tank and he has that protrusion near his anus again. Is this some sort of breeding behavior or is he sick?
Colors are fine btw.
Oh right, the pH is fine, the ammonia is fine the nitrates/nitrites are fine. I have no idea what's going on. Thanks again, this is the first GT I've ever owned so I don't really know their behavior.
1 Answer
- GooberLv 61 decade agoFavorite Answer
Sounds like just a case of him getting bored with the food he has been eating for so long. It's like you eating the same food for your whole life, then someone introducing you to pizza, you won't want the old food anymore. It is important to keep a varied diet not only for nutritional purposes, but for the boredom reason too. You were doing good though keeping him on a main diet of pellets, this is best to keep your fish getting all the vitamins that he needs. You can tell it is just a boredom issue because, as you mentioned, he will go after the pellets when they get caught up in the filter flow and he gets to chase them. You can try feeding him many other types of foods, and still offering the pellets now and then. To get him back on to pellets it may take a day or two of not giving him food, only offering the pellets, this will basically force him into having to eat the pellets. These fish are omnivores, so the foods that you can feed him to keep a varied diet are, blood worms, earth worms, crickets, algae wafers, spirulina flakes, krill (brine shrimp), this is just to name a few, but as said you really need to keep him eating a good pellet like Hikari gold pellets.
As far as the behavior you mentioned at the end of your question, this sounds like he is trying to breed. GT's are sexually mature at 3 inches, so yours is defiantly at that age. The protrusion that you are seeing by his anus is it's sexual organ, I know with my Oscars you can tell male from female by this. With Oscars the females egg tube is oval in the shape, the males sexual organ is pointed and looks rather like a thorn. With the GT's there are said to be other ways to tell the sex, some say that males have a blue anal fin and females have a green anal fin. Others say male GT's grow larger and more colorful than females. They also grow the nuchal hump on their forehead as they mature. Either way, this sounds like you have a healthy happy fish, you just need to get him back on the pellets to some degree.
