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Thats funny you say that about the pellets as they have only just started feeding pellets a couple of moths ago previous to that they fed flakes and had no problems. Thanks.

I am posting this on behalf of my parents..... They have a large 1400 litre pond with about 20 20-25cm goldfish in it. They have had next to no problems with the fish in the 8 years of taking it over when purchasing the house. Yesterday they found one of the orandas was floating upside down but is still alive, its belly is distended unevenly more to the left of its body. But doesnt look like dropsy as its scales are still flat. When its touched it swims back down under the water but slowly comes back to the surface again. It looks aweful to watch it floating around this large pond and i would like any ideas how i could help it, i am going there tommorrow to take it out of the pond and start with some tonic salt, but any other ideas would be great, thanks alot in advance.

Thanks for all the helpful advice, when i purchased the discus i queried the tank size with the breeder and they said it would be fine as long as i keep the water clean, but after reading some other posts i see that i should of purchased a larger one to start with. We are having problems with some of the babies not growing so i am getting worried that their growth may be stunted, when they move into a larger tank do you think that they will start to grow properly or once stunted always stunted?? five out of the six are eating really well.

We brought 6 small discus three weeks ago and they are currently in a small 40litre tank, we have just purchased a much larger tank to raise them in ( approx 200litres). I would like to know how to change their tank in regards to cycling etc as they are obviously not fish to put in a cycling tank. Any ideas??

No i havnt, i will try that, thanks.

Yes i wondered if the tank size was part of my problem, i will start looking for a bigger tank. That was a good price for the discus, we have a lack of discus in Kapiti and buying over the internet seemed like a good idea at the time.

I have just found out that Kapiti coast water is not great for discus and i am having alot of trouble with these babies and i am desperate to get this right!! I will list the problems and any help or advice will be greatley appreciated. 1. Only two out of the 6 will eat, and they will only eat blood worms and a little grated beef heart, the others dont show interest in anything, i have tried, mysis shrimp flakes, tropical flake, dried tubifex worms. The local lfs is getting me some discus tucker to try. 2. The water perimeters are as follows PH 6.2 this has changed as it was 6.8 and stable but now i cant keep it at 6.8. nitrite 0, ammonia nil, gh moderatly hard, kh 60 3.today most of them are doing a bit of twitching almost like they are irritated by some thing. 4.i do 30% daily water changes 5.the little one that was getting picked on has got a small bit of tail rot i think, the tail is freyed with a slight whitish edge, can i use furan 2 on discus?? 6. The temperature is 29.2c and the tank is 40 litres we will up grade the tank as they grow, the babies are about 4cm and three are starting to colour the last three i recieved are more of a slight orangy tinge even though they are blue turqs 7. I thought discus are meant tp be a round shape but the three i recently recieved are more of a triangle shape?? will they change? I am sorry for all the questions but i am really stressing out about these fish so i am putting it all out there so i can help these little guys, thanks so much in advance.

Hi, thanks for all the advice, at 7pm it was gasping at the surface of the water and very jittery, when i checked it about half an hour ago it has lightened in colour a bit and is not gasping anymore its still sitting near the surface of the water but maybe by the morning it will be ok. It is certainly the bigger of the three at about 4cm long maybe five?? But apart from that one all the fish have now settled down and the one that was being bullied has already come out of its shell and looking more confident but when it trys to eat it takes food in then spits it out, so i am not sure why that is, at the moment they still will only eat blood worms... I have been in touch with the seller and he has been very helpful and is sure that it is just the stress of travel etc so i will let you know its progress tommorrow.

I was cleaning out the filter on our tank today(Aqua clear 70) and when i took the media out there was a med size guppy and two tiny babies swimming around which i put back in the tank, i thought that was all of them then while cleaning out the sponge in the media i noticed something wriggling around the edge of the plug hole, then another!! I couldnt believe it finding all these baby guppies like that. I have no idea how long they have been stuck in there for!!!

In my previous post i asked for some advice on our discus as i had only brought three and had problems with bullying, well..... I brought three more that arrived today and one of them arrived looking very black in colour and didnt look that great is there anything i can do for it or is it likely to die??

Ok, thanks, is there any treatment for flukes?

I have now moved them out of the community tank and into a bb tank which they obviously are more at home in as they are all eating really well now, and it is much easier to clean up after them but we are having some issues..... The two bigger ones are picking on the smallest on but also they pick on each other so i am stuck with what to do?? I have emailed the guy asking if he has got any more but i havnt heard back i have also asked him for help. Would i be better taking out the picked on one ? or should i put a tank divider in? I also noticed that one of the bigger ones is breathing faster than the others and its right gills look inflamed?? do you know what this could be from?? Other than that they are very lively and seem to be doing ok.

Ok, thanks for that helpful info. They are approx 5cm accross from nose to tail, i was going to put them into our smaller tank but i have just finished treating those fish for hex and i didnt want to risk them catching it. They arrived on wednsday lunchtime and i have only managed to get one to eat 2 bloodworms yesterday!! so i am having a little stress about them today, they are hiding quite alot but do come out to the main part of the tank occasionally. When i feed them flake food they seem to be scared of it and swim away. When you say three is a bad number does that, why is that? Is there something else i could be feeding them?

Could you invest in another trap for the other femakes that are due? You can also buy double traps that can house more than one labouring female. Our guppies are all due and today one of the females started to give birth so i scooped her up in to the trap and she went on to have 14 babies, i thought she had finished so i let her out as she was stressing in the trap and she went on to have 4 more (that i have seen in the main tank) i have scooped up two and put in the trap but the other two are swimming around quite happily so i will see how they go!! There are only a few other guppies that dont seem too interested in them so they should be ok.

Thank you for that, its very reassuring to hear. We have got plenty of wood in the tank, so hopefully it should stay stable.

Yes i read that too, i do water changes every week and the water stays pretty clean, thanks.

Thats great to know, thanks. I was researching on the net and so many sites said that the right ph for discus was really important to their health and as we were spending so much money on them i guess i was getting a little paranoid. LOL.

I did query that with the lfs about the stress of the ph change but he said they will be fine!! I certainly learn more from the forum than the petshops, thanks for that. The tank is normally stable at around 7.0.

We have restarted our 150litre tank due to disease. Currantly occupied by a few guppies, some baby bristlenoses, 2 gba and one adult bristlenose.(the tank is cycled and going great) Yesterday we recieved 3 baby discus from Auckland. The nitrite is less that 0.1, ammonia nil the ph has always been 7.0 but was advised that discus like it at 6.5 so i got some "proper ph 6.5" and was told to add it to the tank to get an instant result so i did this and it is now 6.8 which is ok i think. The guppies and golden bristlenoses were looking a little stressed(breathing fast) yesterday as was the discus but i did expect them to be after a traumatic journey, some of the guppies are a little dark in colour too which they didnt use to be in their other tank. Should i keep using the ph stuff?? has anyone else use it? If i could have some feedback about what i am or am not doing right would be great, i want to make sure that everyone is happy.

Yip, its annoying when people dont look after their animals, the scary thing is that the day i picked up the fish she had said she had just brought a whole lot of tropical fish that day!!! i thought that the tropical tank looked quite clean, poor fish they will not last long if she couldnt look after one goldfish!!

Thanks alot for your kind words. i will let you know how we get on, i am giving him/her a second treatment of furan2 today then after a few days will start the metronidazole treatments then hopefully it will be on the way to recovery.

Thats really helpful, thanks Caryl i will give it a go.

Thanks everyone for your supportive comments, the fish seems to be doing quite well today, i am pretty sure it is blind as when it eats it just seems to find the food by chance, and bumps into the side of the tank quite alot its right eye is much larger than the other and has a dilated pupil yet the smaller eye has a pinpoint sized pupil, strange!! I think the larger eye has come down slightly in size, maybe it had popeye i am not holding my breath that it will return to its normal size but you never know. It definatly has hex as it is trailing alot of mucous from its back end, so i will do a metro dose this week for about five days.Then a break and maybe another dose of furan 2, i want to make sure that it is definatly disease free before putting it out in the pond. thats if we decide to put it out in the pond, i am worried that if its blind it wont find enough food, but i will see after it has healed. Will keep you posted.

We dont do coldwater fish, but i couldnt help putting a bid on a 16cm Goldfish that was pictured in a 15cm sized fish bowl on trademe. Its tail was bent around it and i doubt it could even swin forwards except going round and round. My parents have a 1400 litre pond so i thought if there were no other bids on it i would buy it for $20. We went all the way to Feilding to pick it up and i was in for more of a shock as i saw that it had a nasty swollen eye that had blood in the pupil, its beautiful tail was desintergrating (tail rot) and i have suspisions that it also has Hex. The seller tried telling me that these injuries occured through the fish falling off the bench while waiting in its bag for me to pick it up, but i could tell that it was due to aweful conditions. she said that i didnt have to buy it, but who would want to leave it like that!! Any way the fish is doing really well, we have got it in a tank at the moment as i wont add it to the pond until i know for sure that it is disease free. We are treating it with Furan 2, and i will also do a course of Metro just in case, it is eating really well however i think it is blind. If anyone has any other suggestions on how to help this fish it would be appreciated.

Thanks for all the info, some are definatly growing but alot of them are looking aweful, i will just have to see how they go. Definatly wont be buying plants online again. We dont have a huge selection of plants at our lfs.