[Tshante24]

Please help! My red devil cichlid is 6 years old and has not been eating or swimming for 2 weeks. He lays on his side at the bottom of the tank as if he is dieing. I have done a water change 3 days ago with no success. I have taken the water to be tested and all was fine. It appears his skin is peeling. His eyes and body are covered in the white peeling looking stuff. Also, there are brown looking pellets all over my tank but I don't even feed him pellets. They reappeared after I cleaned the tank out. I've tried ick guard which hasn't helped. Pictures of brown pellet looking stuff and fish included. He breaths slowly. I love h so much and dont know what else to do.

 

[Auballagh]

Whew.....
That's not something I would like to see well, ever.... And yes, that Cichlid is almost certainly going to die (If it hasn't already). At six years in age, it wasn't exactly young. But that is still too young to die of old age.
This Red Devil looks like it was overcome by a runaway fungus infection. A problem that was probably caused by a really high bacteria load in the water. The 'brown pellets' you mention, just look like chunks of his skin that sloughed off from the infection, and were caught up in the filter intake.

 

[Tshante24]

Whew.....
That's not something I would like to see well, ever.... And yes, that Cichlid is almost certainly going to die (If it hasn't already). At six years in age, it wasn't exactly young. But that is still too young to die of old age.
This Red Devil looks like it was overcome by a runaway fungus infection. A problem that was probably caused by a really high bacteria load in the water. The 'brown pellets' you mention, just look like chunks of his skin that sloughed off from the infection, and were caught up in the filter intake.

Thank you so much for replying.