Petricola discoloration

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Kagia
Posts: 2
Joined: 18 Dec 2020, 00:47
Location 1: BC
Location 2: Canada

Petricola discoloration

Post by Kagia »

I just noticed one of my petricola has these big white spots behind his gills. Identical on both sides. Seems healthy otherwise. Still eating a lot, very active, nothing out of the ordinary that I can tell. Water parameters are all spot on.

PH 8.2
GH 10
KH 11
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrite
About 10 ppm Nitrate

Anyone seen anything like this? Any idea what it could be?

Sorry, not a great pic. Impossible to grab a decent pic of any of the lunatics in this tank. The white spots are slightly more prominent than in this pic.

Image
Viktor Jarikov
Posts: 5263
Joined: 26 Jan 2010, 20:11
My images: 11
My cats species list: 25 (i:0, k:0)
Spotted: 4
Location 1: Naples, FL
Location 2: USA

Re: Petricola discoloration

Post by Viktor Jarikov »

I can't say I've ever seen this before on any of my synos or met with this in forums, etc.
Thebiggerthebetter
fish-story.com
Kagia
Posts: 2
Joined: 18 Dec 2020, 00:47
Location 1: BC
Location 2: Canada

Re: Petricola discoloration

Post by Kagia »

It was gone by the next day. 🤷‍♂️
Viktor Jarikov
Posts: 5263
Joined: 26 Jan 2010, 20:11
My images: 11
My cats species list: 25 (i:0, k:0)
Spotted: 4
Location 1: Naples, FL
Location 2: USA

Re: Petricola discoloration

Post by Viktor Jarikov »

Sounds like possibly some kind of mood indicator then?
Thebiggerthebetter
fish-story.com
Rhinox
Posts: 6
Joined: 26 Mar 2010, 18:29
Location 2: Painesville (Cleveland), OH

Re: Petricola discoloration

Post by Rhinox »

Hi I realize this thread is a few months old and I'm not a regular around here but happened across this thread and can say I saw this before in my petricola/lucipinnis I kept around 10 years ago. The marks would come and go, sometimes look faint like the picture above, sometimes a much more opaque white. I eventually witnessed aggression between individuals and that particular spot was where they would bite/latch on when skirmishing amongst themselves. The picture above looks identical to the marks I would see, so I'd say it's highly probable those marks are bites/scratches/abrasions due to infighting between individual petricola/lucipinnis.

I've been away from the hobby for about 9 years but I'm in progress of getting a new setup and plan to try a group of the larger multipunctatas/grandiops synos (it's why I popped in here today) rather than the petricola/lucipinnis because of this specific issue. I unfortunately did not have success keeping the petricola/lucipinnis. I had at least 6 of them in a 125g setup with mbuna, and eventually all the petricola/lucipinnis were killed but 1. Killed by aggression amongst themselves, not by the mbuna, IMO and IME.
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