New discus with possible gill flukes???

[Karen]

On Sunday I picked up a blue turk, that I had purchased off Trade Me.

The owner told me he had moved a couple of pieces of bog-wood from the tank a couple of days earlier, and this particular discus took fright and injured himself.

A day before I arrived he had treated the tank with Melafix, and Methane Blue, because the discus and developed a funcus growth where he beleives the scales had come off.

What I saw on Sunday was a small white spot.

5 hours travel later, I placed him in with my 5 discus, I was not too concerned about quarantine as he was in a tank with 6 discus in Rotorua.

I am now concerned as I see a thread like worm above his head about 1-2mm long.

I have read some information about flukes and are not convinced that this is what it is.

I am unable to take a photo as he is still not too sure of his surroundings.

Can anyone offer any helpful suggestions.

[sharn]

i dont know what skin flukes look like but perhaps anchor worm? they look like little worms hanging off the skin? the worm like thing may be pus or something perhaps?

gill flukes are pretty impossible to see with the naked eye and dont hang out of the gill area that i know of. some signs of gill flukes are spitting out food repeatedly, using gills irregularly, pumping their gills, flashing against stuff and sometimes head twitching. there are a few methods of removing flukes- prazi and potassium permagenate (must be used on conjunction with hydrogen peroxide) seem to be the two most common. i was reading on simplydiscus how bad drontal tablets can be for the fish and it was strongly reccomended not to use them on discus. pure prazi is expensive and can be hard to find but its a very gentle med which also does tapeworm, it does not hurt your bio filters. PP plus hydrogen peroxide IMO seems quite harsh but apparently works wonders if you get it right (fatal if you get it wrong) but it kills your bio filters and will clear up most nasties in the tank.

i would quarentine him asap, he would have most likely passed anything he had onto the tank (even though he was with other discus doesnt mean they were all healthy) but it will be easier to treat him in a BB tank.

hope someone can help you out some more and your new discus recovers real quick

[Jettin]

Like sharn said if they are using their gills irregularly -

A common way of finding out if the discus has gill flukes or not is to watch their breathing, if they are breathing heavily and their gills are flairing out more than they should, or if they have one gill closed and are breathing out from the other gill.

HTH

Jeff

[Karen]

Thanks for your comments so far guys.

No the fish does not appear to struggling to breathe.

Something I did not know about before I picked up, was he has only been fed discus tucker and nothing else, not that I think that has anything to do with it.

The long white thread is still there.

[Discusguru]

You shouldn't have got the fish if it is not 100% right.

You should have quarantin it for at least 2 weeks to de-stress (if there is such a word) it and to adapt to your feeding and waterchange routine without being hassle by other fish.

Discus with gill flukes will be dark, clamp fins, hiding, swollen and flare gill plate , and all those mention by Jeff and Sharn.

Ron

[Karen]

Whatever the problem all apears to be well the white thread has gone, the discus is a little less shy and he the female are looking after a good size batch of eggs.

[sharn]

good to hear

discus can sometimes take a while to settle in, i have been told larger discus dont take to moving as well as the smaller ones do.

congrats on the eggs- will you attempt to keep them or let them get eaten?