fishplants

Hi Vervo, how old are they? If you are feeding only brine shrimp, they won't be overfed. Just check there is not too much uneaten food after each feeding. Do any of the fry appear bloated? I generally get 2-3 fry with stomach/intestinal issues that I cull before they die. Are you putting water into your fry tank, that came from your BBS hatching setup? Your water changes are sufficient, although if they are 6 weeks or older you can go to 90% daily (one change per day). You don't need a night light on. Do not put food in the tank at lights out. Even though you have a night light on the fry will sleep, and if they are sleeping they won't be eating. I believe that long term use of a night light is damaging to fish (that are not nocturnal). After all, they need to sleep. And discus fry are very, very active during the day. HTH

Some Discus breathe 'harder' than others, ie their gill cover has a greater range of movement than other Discus. It may be due to slight deformity in the gills, or previous damage (flukes maybe) or it may be 'just one of those things'. I don't know. Discus can also breathe more rapidly and deliberately when eating or stressed, and this isn't always shown equally amongst the fish in a tank. Intermittent breathing from one gill when the other remains clamped is no cause for concern either. Unless it is constant and from the same gill, and/or they are 'flashing' against objects a lot.

No, it isn't a typical symptom of gill flukes. Pretty common for some fish to breathe like this at times. Especially if just been fed or some chasing going on. Gill flukes is normally indicated by a combination of 'flashing' and breathing heavily from one gill only. One of my adults goes through stages of doing this though, and has done for some time. He changes which gill he breathes from too! There is a secondary flap in behind the hard gill cover, this can be apparent on some fish and not others. HTH

Well done!! If the Cardinals don't get them as wrigglers they definitely will as free-swimmers! :lol: Good practice for the parents though. Is the damage to the dorsal a deformity or the result of a wound? Is the top fish (the male I presume), pigeon based? cheers

One of my Mums gets very frantic when the fry start spending time away from her (or her partners) sides. She charges at them, often clicking her jaws, and on her side. This usually happens first thing in the morning when there is just enough light to see, and the fry have not yet returned to the parents. She is fine with the fry being on Dad, just not swimming around the tank by themselves. In your case, using a divider will artificially create the same issue, ie Mum can see the fry but can't get to them, as they swim between the two sides created by the divider. Hence the reason it occurs anytime of the day. A Discus parent that is irritated by the fry feeding off them (unlikely at only 11 days old) will swim away from the fry, not towards them. And 11 day old fry would make a nutritious snack if she so wished.

Hi Vervo, is the behaviour the Mum is exhibiting occur first thing in the morning? Ie when it gets light?

Hatchets definitely!!! Just make sure you have NO gaps in your lid. Will also give you a good excuse to run around your backyard like a 5 year old trying to catch moths to feed to them! oops, my secret is out now! :lol:

Definitely not 12 hours! Mine are usually between 3.5 days to 4 days (ie 84 to 96 hours) at 28 degrees. Shorter if at 30 degrees. The night light is a good idea, but I usually put it on once the eggs have hatched, so that the parents can pick up any wrigglers that fall off. Also important for the first night after free swimming as the parents will usually 'put the kids to bed'. ie they will reattach the newly free swimming fry to the cone to prevent them swimming aimlessly around the tank which can exhaust them. It is funny watching the parents try to do it the second night, the fry are much stronger and don't have a bar of it! Hope that helps.

The highlighted bit above could be your problem, while the filter would have been full of beneficial bacteria from your community tank, sitting in clean water for a week without any food (ie fish waste) would most likely have reduced the bacteria levels significantly. A lot of people doubt the effectiveness of Cycle. When I set up a breeding/QT tank, I do what you did and seed the sponge filter in my community tank and then place filter and fish (breeding pair of Discus for example) into the breeding/QT tank at the same time. The bacteria in the filter need the fish waste to survive.

Feeding regime? HITH is cause by nutritional deficiencies resulting from poor feeding/intestinal parasites. Also, damage and subsequent fungus can leave a crater that looks identical to HITH, but isn't. Although, just having a closer look at the second picture, it looks like another patch beginning to the left of the crater?

Hi there, Loaches, in general, are very sociable (although Pakistani Loaches can bicker), but they do have a stoush every so often. Even when they play those very strong jaws can cause some damage. One of my Striata Loaches recently lost most of it's dorsal fin, it healed up very quickly and is now growing back.

No worries. Yes, Discus can be a bit of a pain trying to have them all get along. Multiple tanks helps, as an aggressive fish in one tank can become the submissive fish in another.

Everybody will say 'no', and quote you things suh as 'minimum 50 litres per fish'. But, if you are prepared to have a reasonably frequent water change schedule, than 4 Discus will be no problem. If they are Juvies you should do very frequent W/C to get good growth. You could try 3 fish and see how that goes, or just leave the 2 for a while to see if they sort themselves out. If you add a 3rd, you may get the same aggression issues, and then add a 4th later you will most likely get them again! 'Tis just the way they are! But generally a larger group allows their natural structure to form well. One of my tanks has 7 adult/sub adult Discus in it, and they are nearly always bickering. Not helped by the fact that in the group there is one sexually mature female, and 3 young males vying for her attention! :lol: (she has already 'slept' with 2 of the 3 :lol: )

As others have said, this is very normal as Discus have a strong hierarchical structure. it will usually settle down after a week or two. i wouldn't put a divider in as that is only delaying/masking the problem. As Ryan said, might pay to get one or two more discus so that they can develop a stable structure.

PM sent.

What is your dose of Prazi? How are you delivering the medicine? Unless it is a very, very high dose, it shouldn't be killing your angels.

Good idea. I am growing out 3 batches of Discus fry and one tank of sub-adults in straight tap water at the moment (pH 7.2-7.4), and I definitely can't complain about their growth rate! The first batch of fry range between 30mm (two runts) and 45mm avg 37.5mm excl tail at only 10 weeks old. My tap water is sourced from the same place as yours, except we don't have chlorine in ours. If you wanted to (for some other reason), it is very easy to create a dark, 6.4pH tank using water pre filtered through a peat filter system. This does remove some of the beneficial salts from your water though, but not all. RO units can be very dangerous for Discus fry as they remove all of the dissolved solids (calcium etc as well as other less desirable chemicals) in water. If you used 100% RO water your Discus would suffer very badly, you would need to remineralise your water before putting it in the tank. So, aside from the chlorine issue, you may as well skip that complicated, expensive step and just use tap water. Hope that helps? What are the juvenile discus you have?

I don't understand why you would use chemicals that are not proved/recommended for use on fish. If your intent is to utilise the Praziquantel part of the Vita Pet All Wormer, then you are under-dosing your tank. The generally accepted minimum of Prazi is 2.5mg/l, the dose you are using is 1mg/l or less. Which is not only a waste of time and money, but potentially counter-productive as it can cause drug resistance. On the other side, you are dosing your tank with 13.7mg/l of active chemicals, that are not proved/recommended for that use. That is a large dose of the usual safe fish treatments, let alone unproven ones. Try and increase that dose by 2.5 times (in order to get the correct dose of Prazi) and see what happens. :facepalm:

Just remember that those 'other' worming tablets like Drontal and Vita Pet contain other active ingredients (ie they are broad spectrum), not just praziquantel. Droncit only contains Praziquantel. I wouldn't use them unless I knew what impact those other active ingredients would have on fish.

Metronidazole (as Trichozole 200mg/400mg tablets) can only be purchased by prescription, from a vet. You can also buy it in an aqueous solution, although I found this very expensive (also only prescription). Short of taking the fish in to the vet, you need to to talk to a vet and describe your problem, and what steps you have already undertaken. Don't expect them to say yes if you just ring up and say "I want some metronidazole"! If you can get some Trichozole, PM me and I will run you through what has worked for me. Also, Prazi is best done in a two dose approach, 5-7 days apart. I don't know the active ingredient percentage of Adtape so don't know if your single dose was sufficient.

Amen to that! Wild caught would be great too!

Yep! I run a 300w Jager in my 120l tank, to 28 degrees, and my avg room temperature is 19-20 degrees in winter (thanks to the 4 tanks in a small room!)

The 'ratings' for Jager heaters are based on quite a high ambient temperature. So if the ambient temperature is lower than that rating, you may need to increase your wattage. Below is a very useful way to calculate size of heater needed, and I have found it to be very accurate. If you don't have anything to measure your room temperature, just use one of those glass aquarium thermometers. Heater calculation table Instructions: Subtract the average temperature of the room the aquarium is located in from the temperature you wish to maintain the aquarium water at. Find the size of your aquarium in the left hand table column and move to the column that shows the number of degrees the aquarium needs to be heated. If the heating requirement is between levels, move up to the next larger size. In larger aquariums or where the room temperature is significantly below the desired water temperature, two heaters may be required. If this is the case, install the heaters at opposite ends of the aquarium to heat it more evenly. Heater size guide Gallons/litres 5oC/9oF 10oC/18oF 15oC/27oF 5 gal/25L 25 watt 50 watt 75 watt 10 gal/50L 50 watt 75 watt 75 watt 20 gal/75L 50 watt 75 watt 150 watt 25 gal/100L 75 watt 100 watt 200 watt 40 gal/150L 100 watt 150 watt 300 watt 50 gal/200L 150 watt 200 watt 2x200 watt 65 gal/250L 200 watt 250 watt 2x250 watt 75 gal/300L 250 watt 300 watt 2x300 watt Example Average room temperature = 15 degrees C Desired water temperature = 25 degrees C Heating required = 10 degrees C Tank size = 100 litres Heater size = 100 watts

Nice fish discusdude! I have a wild-type Blue-Brown/Blue Turq pair, currently have 8 week old fry and 7 day old fry. I have a Leopard (9 bar)/Brilliant Blue pair, currently with 3 week old fry. I also have a pair of Golden Red Melons, currently on strike . I have two young (circa 12 months old) High Fin Blue Diamond Males that have paired up with a female wild-type Blue-Red (not yet sure which male she will choose). Ultimately I would like to pair these two males with two (suspected) Blue Diamond Females. I also have a (suspected) Brilliant Blue male that I might try a forced pairing with the female Brilliant Blue mentioned above. Also hoping to get a pair from three Leopard Spotted Snakeskins (14 bar). cheers

Sorry to hear about the problems with your big discus, I really hope he pulls through. Despite their reputation, Discus are fairly robust. I had a female breeder shipped overnight from Auckland to CHCH early last year, she managed to puncture both thick bags - only her head was in water when I opened the box. She was still breathing though but I was 100% certain she would die. She lay on the bottom of the tank for three days, on her side. Now, I can't stop her laying eggs! I am almost at the point of destroying her clutches of eggs as I am running out of tanks for the fry! BTW, I will never use couriers for large Discus, ever again. Hope it works out for you.