Tropheus eating irregular?

[Paul C.]

I have a large male Tropheus Duboisi (Maswa) that is eating extremely irregularly. He has gone for up to 23 days without eating anything. Other times he will eat every day for a few weeks. He is being fed a vegetable based diet and I am careful not to overfeed. Water changes approx. 20% weekly, PH 8.3, Temp. 78. Any tips or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Paul.

[SGypsyMermaid]

you are sure, of course, that he is a male and not a holding female? what else do you have in the tank? are you varying the diet at all?

[Paul C.]

I am pretty sure it's a male. (I purchased it from a cichlid specialty store and had specifically asked for a male.) Also this one lives in a tank with 15 mixed male Malawa cichlids (3" to 6") in a 100 gallon tank.
Food is varied, including spirulina flakes, algae flakes, algae wafers, and the occational leaf of romaine lettuce. All of my other fish greedily snap up any food thrown in the tank. They are never fed meat based foods.

[SGypsyMermaid]

hmmm--even though they require a very high vegetable content in their diet, they are supposed to get some protein. you might consider brine shrimp once a week. also, tropheus have a very complex social structure--maybe he's lonesome for some conspecifics, although that could cause a problem if your malawians are not tough enough to deal with breeding tropheus. i hope that some tropheus experts will chime in here--i'm just speculating. :roll: