Originally published in Buntbarsche Bulletin # 153 December 1992,
The Journal of the American Cichlid Association.
Published here with the author's permission.
The final aspect of pike cichlid maintenance is, of course, disease. Although hardy, even pike cichlids get the blues (and scrunge) occasionally. For starters, they need lots of dissolved oxygen and can be seen breathing heavily if the tank is not sufficiently aerated. Obviously, this stresses the fish and leaves them open for diseases. They do get ich and this is easily cured with formalin malachite green mixture (eg. Aquarium Products Quick Cure is excellent). This is also good for scrapes, etc. that accrue from what Paul Loiselle calls intramural thugee . This product has proved itself to me in the field and is one of staples of my otherwise very limited medicine cabinet. I've never kept a pike cichlid that was obviously parasitized, but I'm sure they are: anyway, they all seem to eat eventually and put on rotund bellies.
One caveat regarding feeder fish: this is a good way to compromise the very fish you are trying to condition. Lots of nasties can come in with feeder fish, either in or on them and these can be passed to your intended diners. Another good reason to get them off feeder fish as soon as possible. I have already mentioned neuromast erosion (head-hole or hole-in-the-head) that can sometimes paradoxically afflict certain pike cichlids. I don't believe the recommended treatment for Hexamita, often suspected as the culprit in cichlid head-hole. I believe experimenting in water quality and chemistry is, although it probably won't help the afflicted specimen. And don't forget those water changes.
Finally, there is the pike scrunge . My experience with this as yet unidentified ailment has been of recent and excruciating vintage. The scenario: you find some beautiful pike cichlids that have just arrived. You take them home and within 24 hours their fins are clamped. They begin breathing heavily and their bodies become stiffened the fish swim with difficulty. The bodies break out in gray-white patches that defy treatment with you name it! Eventually they don't swim at all. If you're lucky, they won't give it to the other established pikes in the tank (they will). If you're smart, you've quarantined them (who am I kidding?). A number of us have had this problem with Cr. cf. saxatilis and few others from Guyana this past spring. If you get them out of the shipment right away and if you treat them with antibiotic, I favor Naladixic acid, then you may get lucky and some will survive. It's not clear whether the problem is in the shipping of the animals or something that is running around in the exporter/importer's holding facility, but boy is it ever virulent. (The source's stock died too, the same miserable way, despite antibiotic treatment after the first signs of trouble.) I'm sure I have the most expensive pair of Cr. cf. saxatilis in the country: it took well over a dozen animals of various sizes and shipments to get two healthy fish. And my experience has been a shared one. Moreover, the unhealthy ones shared the scrunge with some established fish and the lot of them went down the tubes.
Although I rarely recommend prophylactic treatment, if you are getting your pikes from an importer directly out of the shipping box, it probably isn't a bad idea. Despite the above, in general pike cichlids tend to be industrial-strength neotropical cichlids which tolerate a wide variety of aquarium situations.
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