Three main causes for "Malawi Bloat" have been identified:
1) The addition of large amounts of salt  with the intention of creating a more natural habitat. That's correct, the rift lakes of Africa are alkaline and have hard water (pH 8.0-8.9, and a General Hardness between 200-400 ppm), but common salt will not alkalinize your tank. What makes water "hard" is a combination of dissolved calcium and magnesium. If you have soft water and need to raise the pH/hardness of your water, The use of crushed coral as a substrate is what you should concider. Rocks, like limestone, are also known to raise the hardness of the water, it's It's also recommendent that you do a lot of waterchanging this will also benivit the hardness of your water. it's not to be recommendent that you use wood in your malawiaquarium it will only raise the ph.

2) Long term exposure to poor water quality. parasites will be getting the uppperhand. Malawi's are very capable of fighting of decises, but when the conditions in the aquarium are poor they will have a lot of problems with it.

3) A bad diet, Malawi's have their own dietery needs, you can's give a cichlids that lives on algae to much of protien food like bloodworms. Also to be avoided is the use of only flake or pelletfood they contain a lot of fishmeal.

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