Blind???

[Milo]

I had to get rid of one of my fish today. Kind of sad. It was my frontosa... Yeah I know, we all talked about this a few months back. But it doesn't make any sence to me. Maybe someone else can give some feed back. Here is the story.

I have a 55 gal tank with cichlids in it. i had about 10 mabunas, 1 frontosa, 1 pleco and 1 red tail shark. They were all doing fine, then all of a sudden i woke up this morning and one of my frontosa's eye was all grey, and he was swiming into things. What could have caused this? I didn't see any of the other fish picking on him.

 

[Cichlid-Man]

Just by going off of Discus, possibly bad water. Discus can get cloudy eye when the water isn't up to par. But they arn't really blind. Can't say for sure though.

 

[kay-bee19]

Does "got rid of" mean you relocated the frontosa from that tank or that you "put it down" because of the eye?

I hope the front wasn't euthanized because of the bad eye, they can actually adapt to an eye loss if the other eye is functioning. If the eye was still intact there are meds that can clear it up over time (melafix works great). I had a c. moorii damage an eye after colliding with a rock. The eye looked very bad, but after a week's treatment witl melafix they eye cleared up and was good as new.

Hard to say what exactly happened to your frontosa, however. The frontosa either bolted into an object in the tank and bruised the eye (as they can be skiddish) or sustained the eye wound from one of the more aggressive mbuna (frontosas ideally aren't recommended to be kept with mbuna). Mbuna are likely to torment a perceived weakened fish.