Discus recouping from extreme temperature drop.

[Moya]

Woke up this morning to feed my fishy's and see little miss blue discus practically suckered against the filter intake. Tank water was 14 degrees, the heater having probably gone in the night. My big male discus was looking a bit better for wear, but still not so good.

Having put them in my other discus tank and acclimatising them (though there was a big temp change so this was still probably a bit of a shock) they haven't really improved much at all in the 12 hours. Has anyone else had experience with something similar, i.e fast cooling and then how long it takes to recoup once warm? The boys fins are a bit tattered and hes putting out extra mucus and appears to be having problems with buoyancy, sitting at the top in once corner resting against glass. The little blue is sitting behind the intake on the gravel resting, still breathing, but very clamped.

I will be so ridiculously upset/pissed off if I loose my beautiful big white boy

[hovmoller]

I think the crucial thing is to acclimatise them very slowly.. even if going from very cold back to "normal" the shock of the sudden change might be more damaging than the cold experience overnight. But that doesn't really help now. I'd say keep them as stress free as possible and don't feed until they are feeling better.

I had the opposite happen to me.. heater malfuntioned and wouldn't shut off.. so I woke up to a nice fish soup of 41 degrees!!.. my pleco was the only survivor.. the rest were floating belly up! Plecos are amazing!

[Moya]

Yeah, I've got 60+ baby plecos in that tank and they couldn't care less about the temp, still within range for them really. They are pretty awesome. Have a feeling my 3 little clown loaches will either be dead, or riddled with whitespot though. Havent found them yet, as had to go to a biochem test

[Gill]

My heater went one night in the 4ft tank and i just added a new heater, left the fish in and let the water heat up again . All fish seem ok the CLs took a while to start swimming around but so far no problems. When i was swapping tanks one of the Cls hitched a ride on the log and got dunked staright into the tank, just as well he didnt fall off :oops: :oops: :oops: I was planning a nice slow move !!!!!!

[Moya]

Well they're still alive this morning so thats good. I wish I didn't like such expensive fish. Its a pain on the pocket and the heart when one goes.

[henward]

turn the heater on, if its a big tank, the heat will go up slowly, slow enough to aclimatise them.

all you can do is reduce stress, and wait and see

[Moya]

Yeah went and got a new heater, was still under warranty, only 3 months old. A jager too which I was upset about. Had good experience with them otherwise. Fish are fine now, when I found them that morn I thought the little blue one was toast (or bread if it was too cold?). She wasn't moving and just getting buffeted around by the current every now and then. Shes recovering now though, tough little blighter. I got her for free because shes ridiculously stunted and rather messed up internally (has a lot of difficulty doing number 2s).

Seem to be out of the woods, yay

[phoenix44]

how are they looking today?

They should recover ok, because it sounds like you did everything just right.