Sickly Discus - Please help!

[The Great White Hand]

Hi

I've got a 9cm checkerboard in my tank with four other discus and other small fish. Tank AR980 extensively planted with wet/dry filter and Aqua One CF1200 cannister as well.

Symptoms:

Bowel motions, almost slimey (could be stomach lining?) trailing below body, the colour of colourbits, occur soon after feeding. Still eats well (greediest fish) and has had obvious BM's since going into tank 4 mths ago and is growing the fastest by a long shot, is the No. 2 discus in the tank for now behind a larger lady in red. Funnily enough haven't seen BM's from the other discus.

Breathing seems slightly more laboured than other discus, but I've raised the water temp from 27.5c to 29.5c.

Behaviour: I'm please to see him at the front of the tank again and bothering the BN, but for a few hours yesterday looked darkish and seemed to be shy and appeared to be hidng?

Compounding things I've been doing some deep substrate cleaning and dumped some rubbish from the wet/dry filter into the tank made it a bit dirty. Stopped the cleaning and have increased WC's from 30% every 2 days to 45% every 2 days. Water parameters good except 0.2 - 1.0ppm on the phsosphates.

I guess I'm thinking Hex and the breathing makes me think gill flukes or something? so contemplating metro or dimetro and prazi for the flukes.

Any ideas with respect to diagnosis and treatment would be very welcome

Regards Guy (TGWH)

[tHEcONCH]

DON'T PANIC! In tHEcONCH's experience that is usually caused by an excess of finely ground food - feed it frozen blood worms for a couple of days to help clear its system out, and try to include more fibre (aka frozen bloodworms) in its diet. Incidentally tHEcONCH would drop the temperature to 28 degrees so that it can carry more oxygen / relieve its respatory stress.

[nicmack]

if its flukes you should see one of the gills clamped to the side or being used more than the other and the fish generally hanging out at the back of the tank or sitting on the bottom of the tank, usually there is flashing against plants, driftwood etc

[The Great White Hand]

Hi,

Now the little red melon (smallest of five), is getting very thin (not really eating with the other four), peppery and staying at the back, will still shoo away the other small red turq if it comes to the back of the tank.

Both the large checkerboard and the large red melon are having the slimey BMs and the dwarf gourami looks bloated around the stomach (guorami my first fish, went through the cycle).

Water parameters fine, except phosphates up a bit, dropped temp to 28.3C, doing 30-40%WC every 2-3 days

Advice appreciated

Regards, TGWH

[tHEcONCH]

Hi - I think your water temperature is still a bit too high - drop it to between 27-28 degrees - that will allow for healthier plants without needing fertiliser and other additives which will in turn clean up your water (excess fertiliser and/or medicine is just a polutant, afterall), however I suspect the real problem is that you simply have too many discus in too small a tank. I find I can only sustain 3 or 4 healthy adult discus in a 240 litre community tank - any more than that and one will inevitably become the runt. I suspect you might find that the weaker one or two of yours will die and then the remainder do fine - unless you keep stuffing new discus into your tank. I've found Discus to be beautiful and relatively easy to keep so long as you provide them with enough clean water (without medicines, fertiliser, or anything else Canterbury tap water is pretty much perfect for Discus) and most importantly - territory.

[sharn]

Im not sure i agree conch, i have 6 adult (13 to 15-16cm approx) healthy discus in a 220L tank. However it is a barebottom tank with no other fish and still gets regular 50% w/cs every 2-3 days.

Also with a larger amount of discus you usually have less of a chance of one becoming the seriously runted fish as aggression is dispersed amongst the group. My 'runt' of the group still eats readily and is still a solid fish but it does hide more than the others.

I wonder if it would help trying a BB tank out for a bit GW (would pay to wait for others opinions on this one tho), you would be able to keep it cleaner and it will make it easier to keep an eye on their poops. If his poops are still slimey i would suggest putting them all thru a course of a metro feed (if he is still eating of course) and see if that helps- ive read a few people do this every now and again as a preventitive but. Extra feeds with good quality foods and perhaps extra water changes should hopefully help him plump back up to his normal self

Worms could be a factor but im really not sure what to look for when it comes to them other than the segments in the poop.

Hang in there, you are doing a good job

[BK]

I'ld up the temp to 32 and add a air stone, add some peat to reduce the ph, feed white worms and heart, soak some tetra bits in some Metro and see what happens. This is all I would do apart from reducing the numbers in the tank but if your doing water changers every 2 days don't think that this will do much. I have 4 full size D's in 220 ltrs with a pair of Apsitos and about 30-40 young plus about 20 cory's and they only get a 50% water change once a week. They're not spawning so the water isn't 100% but the Apisto's are so it can't be that bad.

BK

[The Great White Hand]

Thanks Sharn and BK

I'll give them a dose of metro in their tetra bits. They're currently eating a mixture of tetra bits, premium flake, F/D and Frozen BW's, F/D daphnia and a frozen turket heart and vitamin mix (Schlingmann's Discus Fit).

Regards, TGWH

[herefishiefishie]

Sorry didn't see this earlier. Crowding tanks isn't a concern if all eating & water is fine. 28.3 is fine too. Many discus keepers keep at this or higher.

As you first stated a dose of prazi, one dose each for 3 days, continue for 3 weeks.

Treat with metro, cheaper if you mix with food & feed.

Good luck.

Frenchy

[tHEcONCH]

It is just my opinion, of course, but I think that a lot of people tend to diagnose illness as the cause rather than the result of stress. I have enjoyed great success with Discus using a fairly simple but increasingly unfashionable formula - plenty of clean water and not succumbing to the temptation of 'adding one last fish' to my tank.

TGWH says he has a planted community tank, so although some of the advice given here might be fine otherwise, its difficult to apply to a planted community tank without collateral damage. Plants will struggle and even begin to decline at temperatures above 28 degrees (so that will increase his phosphates again), and other fish (depending upon what they are, of course) might also struggle at that temperature. Medicines always have a negative effect on bacterial and microbial populations but their use can be easily avoided by not stressing the fish out in the first place.

Just my 2cents.

[Loopy]

RIP Belle

[herefishiefishie]

I agree, clean water is best, but slimey poo, darkened body colour & heavy breathing is not a sign of a healthy fish. If the discus is still eating best to treat now. If it is a disease & stops eating it will die, be to late to treat. To me a prize discus is better to treat, than risk a few cardinals.

In saying that, Prazi has no affect on plants or bio load what so ever. If metro is mixed in the discus fav food, same again. No affect on plants or bacteria what so ever. I would use metro, it is an internal problem, slimey poo.

Frenchy

[Loopy]

The main fish that was discussed died today. It started eating but only for a few days really. Then it stopped, struggled with breathing then today arrived in the big fishtank in the sky.