new Apistogramma cacacatoids sp?

Question
I'm very new about having these little fellas. But have got the bug about having  them.  I bought one young male and two tiny females.  I don't have good eyesight (in right eye) and bought them in a hurry as shop was closing.  A day later, I noticed a large WHITE bump on top of the male's head.  It looked like a small Hawaiian atoll, referring the "look" like the real Hawaiian atoll.  I live in Hawaii.  The other two were normal.  I tried to find out what this was.  He seemed to act normal but had this bump.  Checked with fish shop and said they didn't know what it was  and all their fish were normal.  I called other fish shops  and got a few ideas on medicine.  I tried Kurdon Aqua Herbals for a multiply things like ich, fungus, protozoans & Dinoflageliates for a week.  His bump grew bigger! Then I tried API Melafix for cichlids, because it sounded like fungus.  This did not seem to work or not fast enough, because the bump started to flatten out across the top of the head only.  At this point, I brought the fish into the pet shop as it is hard to diagnosis over the phone!  The fellow said it had hole in the head disease and don't worry, he look pretty healthy. Also said it takes a long time to heal.  I bought the API General Cure that was recommended.  It was too late, because he died.  
I looked up hole-in-the head on-line, and the pictures of the fish shown did not look like his at all. The pictures showed little tiny holes in the top of the head.  My only conclusion is that maybe he had two things going on at the same time, because in the pet shop's tank, the cichlids were scrappy.  Maybe he had an injury I didn't know about.  Could it be he had fungus and hole-in-the head at the same time?  I'm watching my other two for right now.  Can they get hole-in-the head from him?  Learned my lesson from buying fish in a hurry.  Could you advise on a good book to buy and read that would cover multiply things about apistogama cocacatoos. Also another question:  I bought a betta (a fancy one) and noticed he has a hard time eating the pellets.  Like his whole body will jiggle trying  to get them down.  I try  to pick out  the smallest ones for him to eat, but he stops eating them for a while and sits on the bottom.  Tried brine shrimp, but doesn't seem to know what to do with them. Also tried frozen blood worms, but he looks at them and goes away.  Does he have an extra small mouth or something?  He was at the fish shop in one of those tiny little cups for long  time because he was  expensive and I felt sorry for him and bought him and put him in one of those large and fancy bowls that you use for decoration and he really perked up.  Thanks for taking time  to read my e-mail.  I will appreciate any info that you give me.  I really love fish and want  the best that I can offer for  them. My other two bettas are doing fine.  I usually do really well with my fish, but the cichlids are new to me and were giving me a real challenge.  I know now, that I should have obtained a hospital tank with a filter to put my male cichlid in to observe.  I usually have very healthy fish and don't have many problems, so got caught unawares.  Mahalo and have a great day.  Really appreciate what you are doing here to help people maintain  their fish better.  

Answer
Hi Margi,
  I think the fish you have is Apistogramma cacutoides.  It comes from South America.  Unfortunately you will not readily find books that talk about that fish.  They are in the Baensch Atlas, but that is a rather expensive and hard-to-get volume.  
  As for the bump on his head, it certainly sounds like more than one thing was going on, but hole-in-the-head was not one of those things. Hole-in-the-head looks like little craters (or even big craters) in the head and starts as erosion of flesh around sensory pores.  It proceeds slowly but is pretty much irreversible in most cases.  What your fish had sounds much more like a bacterial or fungal infection, though it is really impossible for me to say which from here.  Even in person it is very difficult.

  As for the betta, give him time to adjust to a new food.  I feed mine with flake food.  They might not like it at first, but after a few weeks, they will eat it.  It can take awhile for any fish to adapt to a new food because they don't know that they can trust you.  They will eat when they get hungry enough.  The good news is that most fish can go a long time (days, even weeks) before they will come close to starving to death.

-- Ron C.
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
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