is my angelfish sick?

[wimpythug]

Hi,

I have two rather large angel fish in a community tank, generally healthy and well cared for.

One angel fish has sort of fat, fleshy lips -- they look like they are callused, I suppose. The fleshy parts are pretty much symmetrical. The fish looks like it feeds okay and seems otherwise healthy. The other angel fish is pretty similar, but without the extra flesh on the lips. (Okay, I know they aren't really lips...)

The one with the funny lips seems to be dominant. It's slightly bigger, and seems to feed first, though the other one challenges it sometimes. I suppose these might be sex markers or dominance markers.

Please advise. Thanks in advance,


Tim

[spelljunkie]

Just a thought, but as you know, the same types of fish can very different types of personalities (though limited since they are just fish...) - and I believe personality disorders. Are there any decorations, such as rocks, with sharp edges - like where food could get caught in where you fish might like to try to dig food out of those crevases...? I had a fish years ago that always seemed kind of beat up, but never saw why; however, i did have this dried piece of coral (freshwater tank) that was covered with protrusion that were kind of sharp. I removed it and it got a bit better - though I think it still felt the need to run into stuff so would still get marks on it (though not nearly as bad); that fish didn't really last long - like I said earlier, I think fish can have behavioral disorders/brain damage caused during shipping or something (temp changes, etc) that can cause them to act strangely...

Probably not your situation, but since no one else has posted any ideas, thought I would put in my two cents...! Good luck!

[Tommy Gun]

Welcome to the forum wimpythug! You too spelljunkie! God only knows how many spell(ing) junkies this forum could use! j/k

Anyways, while I agree with spelljunkie in that any of those suggestions could be a possibility here, and while I don't want to discount them (in fact, I feel as though we should do our best to consider and monitor as many potential causes as we possibly can), I wanted to add that in some cases, certain fish wind up with similar types of wounds due to fighting; which jumped to my mind due to the fact that you can apparently tell which one is more dominant. However, I can't really recall hearing/reading about angelfish behaving in this manner (i.e. fighting by 'locking lips'), but I do know many of my cichlids do the same thing and wind up with the same wounds on a semi-regular basis.

It may also help to know a bit more information, including, but not limited to (feel free to expand as much as you can):

What size is your tank?

How long has this tank been running?

How long have you had these two angels?

Did you add the angels at the same time, or was there some gap in time between the two?

What sort of decor do you have in this tank? (e.g. is it planted? If not, do you have fake plants? How many? etc...)