New Panduro male heavy breathing - Stress or Gill Flukes? (Updated with photos)

[anewbie]

The number one place I find dwarf cichild hiding are leaves..... here is an example; two fishes can be with in a leaf thickness of each other and as long as they can't see each other they accept things as they are. Of course i have problems with leaves falling on plants and plants dying or wilting from lack of light as they are covered for 30 days so there is that issue but they sure do like to hide under leaves. This little female is actually a krib hiding from the much larger male. Couldn't find any pictures but my a. bitatenia always hid from each other with leaves.

Never owned panduro but rather i always when with nijjensi and they never seem to have any aggression issues - usually pairing the minute they were out of the bags. I have 7 f1s in a 29 and so far i'm not seeing any pairing or aggression activity yet (they are over a year old so i guess it takes 18 or 24 months for them to fully mature?)

Oh well i keep a lot of leaves in their aquarium

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
This sort of look, there aren't any side open spaces.

Cheers Darrel

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

This sort of look, there aren't any wide open spaces.

Should have been

.... Wide open spaces.

Cheers Darrel

 

[neo705]

Thank you both. I have a lot of botanicals I can use. I can create a thicker layer... I think ideally after he is in the clear and when I attempt to introduce the female again.

Back to the issue at hand, I dosed with esha gdex (praziquantel) last night. So far no change (for the better or worse).

 

[neo705]

Update:

I am using chatgpt to count the respiration rate.
His baseline (before treatment) rate was 145 gill movements per minute
Day 1 of treatment: 150
Day 2 of treatment: 155
Day 3 of treatment: 130

His gills look a bit pale to me. Hard to see the filaments but I don't see the usual deep pink/red.
No mucus and no other symptoms.

I've seen a few times in this forum stated that heavy breathing apistos are essentially dying apistos and I'm worried.

Any other ideas of what could be wrong in case it's not gill flukes.

It's definitely not my water. I just found free swimming marginatus fry today!