i have a school of longfin blackskirt tetras in my discus tank, and one of them is out of contol fat! I thought maybe dropsy at first but its not bloated almost exploding. I thought maybe full of eggs but its been a few weeks and no eggs. fish is sill fat, swims and eats jsut fine. any ideas?

Could be constipated. Isolate it and see if it is crapping

Or eggbound. That is often a big problem with tetras in hard water. One theory is that the minerals in the water reduce the flexibility in the shells of the eggs by over-mineralizing them, then the female can't lay them and cannot totally reabsorb them. Unfortunately I've lost a lot of characins and cyprinids to this over the years. That's one reason I ended up favoring cichlids, livebearers and brackish fish: they're tolerance for hard water.

Unless, of course, ya have a water softener.

If she's crapping and ya think she's eggbound, try cutting the normal water with distilled water, by 50%. This softens the water and allows the eggs to soften and reabsorb. At this point she probably won't spawn and the eggs are probably inviable. One note, if she isn't crapping, it could still be she's eggbound. Once bound enough, they can twist or pinch the innards so that they can't crap. Regardless, softening the water won't hurt a constipation problem.

WYite

I did not know that. Good info Wyite.

Could be either, also could be over feeding. How much and how often are they being fed? What are you feeding them?

they are in with discus so they get fed 2 times a day, flake food and occasionally frozen stuff. but none of the other ones are like that