Black spots show up on and off?

Hello all,
new to the site. Learning to navigate and such. I do have a question. I have two earth earter cichlids. They seem to develop black spots throughout the day and then disappear. What is this? Is it an optical illusion? They also are seeming to chase one another. Is this common?

William

Do you have any pics? What earth eaters do you have?

if the spots are showing and vanishing that quick i am guessing it might be part of thier coloration which is dependant on mode.

Sounds like stress spots. Most fish have them and if they are showing its usually a sign of stress.

post some picts

Hmmm....I had a Red Devil that did that but it lasted a week. And one forum said that they get that when they want to mate, idk. The black later disappeared though and I took him back to the shop anyways he killed 3 of my precious Chinese algae eaters and 2 crawdads

Cool. Have not gotten so fancy as to post pictures yet. I will do later. I am sure it has to do with stress or something of the kind. It is the evening and neither of them has the dark black spots right now. It also might be the angle I am viewing them from as well. Just looked over and. Well, thanks for the advice. On to the next set of fish to get.

Bottom right corner has one of the Earth Eaters.

nice. i like what you did with the wood.