PDA

View Full Version : Discus Disasters...help others...



brewmaster15
06-28-2002, 07:35 AM
Hi  all,
   A request from all the those  on the discus learning curve  or at the top.  Go back in  those Discus  archives  and find your memories  of your worst  Discus Disaster. Whether it was your fault or someone elses.  You may have lost those fish, but could help others  prevent it.
 
best way to learn they say to experience  it yourself,  but I think learning from others mistakes is less painful!

 My idea, so I guess I'll start....

 4-5 years ago I had a  really nice tank of Domestics I had gotten from Gwynnbrook  as 2" fish .  I was really proud of these fish.  They were perfect and I raised them up to  spawning age , and they were  pairing up.    I got a call from a  local petshop that they had some really nice wilds they just received , and they hadn't even openned  the bags  yet.  I had always wanted  wilds so I drove down  to  see them.  3 Really nice wild blues were there.  They looked really healthy.  I knew about Quarantteens, I always followed them for at least  several  weeks, but I didn't have a tank or room for one at that time. Still These fish were dream fish.  I broke the rules, gave in and bought them. I got them home and gave them a  FORMALIN  bath and  into the tank they went. (cringe)
 Everything was  fine for   the first couple of days. then it happened and  it happened fast.    My Domestics  got hit  with God only knows what. Fish started breathing rapidly, and gills were inflamed. They darkened and died. The time course was fast  2-3 days .I wasn't on the forums  then, so I  relied  books and friends.  I  panicked , I tried everything. I still don't know if I cured the 2 domestics  that survived  out of 10.  Looking back I think it was  Bacterial Gill disease, but who knows. At the time  I had no access  to  scope.  I lost all the wilds as well.
  I have since learned my lesson.  I will NEVER take a shortcut  on my QT again. It is always a minimum 6 weeks, and I pretreat  for external parasites, hexamit, and internal worms, then I use a  cull from  tanks to check the new fish out further.
   Learn from  my mistakes.. Not that I would ever say I told you so! ;D

Hope this helps someone,
al


who's next?

ChienHsu
06-28-2002, 08:01 AM
Dear Al:

It is a very good knowledge to me.  At the moment, I have six discus.  But, I will have more for sure.  Can you share the QT procedure with me. like what kind of medicines and the sequence, how long it will take and what is the dose?

Thanks

Chien

brewmaster15
06-28-2002, 09:03 AM
Hi Chien,
I'll write it up and post it in the disease board  .
Take care,
al


ps...
 I know  for a fact I'm not the only with painful memories here! ;) Think of this as group therapy....

06-28-2002, 09:32 AM
I had a similar experience with a pair of wild fish I bought. I was in Seattle at a LFS who gets in wilds every year (the only discus he will carry). He had gotten in some Heckles, Manacapura Blues, and some Tefe' Greens.

In the Tefe' tank was the most beautiful wild green discus I had ever seen, nicely color and almost perfect shape. There was also a very dominate "male" in the tank that "she" was hanging with. I assumed they were male and female. I had to have them although I had no room for them at the time. These, too, looked healthy and "clean" so I bought them.

I took them home and put them in a tank with some Green Mambas I bought from Wattley ( I shared this story several times in the past. A Mamba male in that bunch was the nicest discus I had ever seen in person anywhere). 3 - 4 days later - BANG - sick fish, very sick. The Mambas went down hard. The wilds were not much better. I have no idea what it was, but I could not cure it. The female Mambas died after about 2-3 weeks, the wilds died about a week later, and the male Mamba hung on for at least 6 weeks before I put him down. I could no longer wath him suffer and had no hope for a cure. It was the single most stupid thing I have ever done (Pertaining to discus, that is. Believe me, I have done some stupid **** over the years in other areas of my life  ::) )

So, learning from that experience, and I knew better than that, too, at the time, I have never not QT'd a fish since. That was a lesson for me. I had thought that "even" if the fish had  gotten sick, I could just medicate and all would be cool. WRONG!!

Let a newcomer beware of this story and Al's. I am sure others have had disasters, too.

Mat  :-/

chuck
06-28-2002, 10:49 AM
My experience was also with some wilds I purchased at a fish auction a local club was holding. a few days after I introducted them to one of my tanks, my fish started to darken and white slime started to fall off their bodies, my fish looked exacatlly like the photos that Dave Clubine has on his website.  The wilds looked great while all this was going on. To top it off I used the same hoses to do water changes on my other tanks before this outbreak happened. Within 10 days all 5 tanks were infected.  It lasted about 4 weeks  and at the end I lost 24 adult fish and 2 tanks of fry. took me over 1 year to get my tanks back to normal, Now I clorox everything and I keep my new fish seperated until they reach adult size before I mix them.
I couldn't tell you how i cured it, cause I used everything I could get my hands on (To say I was in PANIC mode is a understatment!)I tried Ampicillian, heat, metafix,salt,Formalin. that was about 3 years ago and It still makes me sick thinking of how simple it might have been to prevent.
chuck

06-28-2002, 11:16 AM
Ok Guys..... mine's not quite as dramatic... I hate those hard lessons learned

I bought a used 45 gal high tank... was hoping to use it for a breeding pair. Well it had lizards in it before I bought it  :o I guess you can see where this is going  ::)

I brought the tank in the house filled it up and hey! no leaks after 2 days..... I added my filters and heater....  waited a few more days, all seemed to be fine...... I then added probably 150 - 200 small angelfish to grow out in for awhile. Next morning I had baby angelfish everywhere..... the tank had split down the front side  :flame:

Not only did I have that mess to deal with..... I had to break other tanks down that were in the same room because they were all on 1 long tank stand..... grrrrrr...

Man.....  45 gals of water in the carpet is not a pretty sight  ::)

ok.....  call me a dummy  :crazy: I then decided, it can't be too tuff to recaulk the tank right  ??? Well .... I recaulked the tank and had no problems. I managed to get a spawn from my pair of Discus and raised a few of their fry in there...... Next thing you know..... like an idiot I moved the tank to the living room and it started leaking..... went through the same process of recaulking it......

I then set it up again in my living room no more problems ..... until ..... I broke it down yesterday evening and moved it again, this time to the master bedroom. Well this morning I noticed a leak  :waaa:

I guess it's time to give up on caulking that DA#@ tank  :crazy:

-----> Beth's not a Happy Camper Right Now  :crazy: :waaa: :crazy:

Discusgeo
06-28-2002, 01:21 PM
My dumbest distater was not paying attention to what I was doing in my fishroom. One afternoon while doing water changes I notice that one tank needed cleaning more than the one I had planned on. The one I was suppose to do contained 10 Pigeon Bloods around 18 months old. Now these guys had started to do the make love to me dance for the last week so each day I was adding R.O water to the tank to soften it up. Well getting sidetracked I went and drained another tank full of youngsters and filled there tank full of water. *What I forgot to do was change the valve from the R.O tanks to the tap water tanks and I killed about 25 youngs guys with R.O water because the Ph went from 8 to about 5, water hadness from 600ppm to 4 ppm in a matter of minutes. You see after I change the water I went back into the house and didn't go back outside until feeding time. I will let you guess what part of the tank they were floating in, instead of swimming in the middle. Anyway I change my water setup and they are both separate now, I learned real quick on rapid Ph changes as I took a bunch of beautiful Discus to the trash can.
George

06-28-2002, 01:26 PM
See, we all do dumb stuff from time to time.  :o :o  ::) ::)

Mat  ;D

brewmaster15
06-28-2002, 01:28 PM
Thanks for the replies  so far.  I'm really hoping those who haven't made our mistakes yet- won't! :)

-al

06-28-2002, 04:32 PM
Well lets see, My biggest mistake had to do with a tank full of fry and a heater. I was needing some more room for some fry so I set up another tank, filled it up with aged water and tossed in an already cycled sponge. I grabbed a extra heater that I had laying around and put it in the tank. Next in goes about 100 3 week old fry.
Then I became busy doing other fish room chores when I remembered I had not plugged in the heater so without checking the heater reading I just plugged it in................Can you see where this is going............. Well I didnt check on the tank for the rest of the day wanting the fry to get settled in to their new tank....Awoke the nexted morning to a tank full of cooked fry.....I had used a heater way bigger than I should of for that size of tank and the heater was set as high as it would go because I had used it in a tank that I was treating some fish in......Oh well we live and learn, you can bet I check the heaters now............Randy

Ardan
06-28-2002, 06:50 PM
Well the biggest mistake (I have made many), was about 10 yrs ago. I had about 8 aquariums going. 1 with some pretty decent discus from an lfs, 1 tank with oscars, 1 with tetras, 1 with gouramis.........
Anyway, I started feeding blackworms from the lfs to all the fish.(I bought new worms every couple of wks) All was fine for 1 or 2 months and then,
Discus started scratching, had white spots on sides.
Oscars had slimy white feces, some type of worm on the skin.
Fish started to die.
I examined the blackworms and found a couple of louse, I examined under a microscope the oscar feces and saw what I thought to be capillaria eggs, I saw under the microscope what I thought to be flukes from the discus.
I went to the lfs, they said the blackworms came from a goldfish farm, where they grew the worms in the goldfish droppings. That batch of worms had died.
Anyway, I started to treat with dylox, then I switched to fluke tabs, then I switched to formalin in the tank of discus, sterilize another tank and transfer.
The oscars were given hexamit,(does not work with capillaria, I now know) but they started to die off. Switched to clout, went from 5 oscars to 1. The 1 developed fungus, very bad. Tried salt, dyes, tetracycline. Eventually put him down.
DIscus, started with 5 , ended up with I think 2.
Lost all other fish except a few tetras and  a few corys I believe. It wasn't long after that I took a break from the hobby.
There weren't any forums for help, the folks at the lfs had never dealt with all of that, especially not all at once.
I did learn a lot. But at the time it was a real roller coaster and a bad experience. i don't know what came from the worms, or what diseases "flared up" because of stress to the fish.
Now I say  that is why I became more interested in the sciences of the hobby, because of that experience. So now I know a little more and maybe I can help someone with that bit of knowledge.
btw I now feed blackworms again, from a good source and I take extra precautions, such as rinsing for a week before using, and deworming every month.
Ardan

ps I have also lost fish from not understanding the nitrogen cycle and adding fish too fast, before the tank was even cycled.(mistakes early on in the hobby)


The greatest thing I have learned recently, is that there are many people with lots of knowledge and experiences, all willing to share and help, right here!!

06-28-2002, 06:57 PM
I've had them all. Just name it. The worse disaster I had was knocking over a 4L. jar of Muriatic acid ( HCL) into my overcrowded 150 gal. show tank by a visitor and was too embarrass to tell me until it's too late. "NEVER" place any med. or chemical on top of aquarium.
JimmyL

scotz
06-28-2002, 07:32 PM
Well I guess I can post my dumbest mistake - 21 years ago when I just started breeding angelfish I had put my best pair in a 20 gal. tank and since I was out of room I had to put the tank on the bottom shelf of the bookcase I had just made. My daughter, Rachael, was just 1 at the time, and she always watched me change water, etc. with the fish. One day when I was at work she managed to turn the heater all the way up (These were the days before submergable heaters) and cooked my best pair. I was heartbroken for weeks. I still to this day don't know how she managed to do that since those heaters were hard to turn and my wife was in constant supervision of her, but my wife says my daughter was looking at the fish when she was making lunch. I sometimes tease my daughter about her fish cooking skills!! By the way, Rachael, is my only child out of 3 who is into keeping fish!

scotz

Denny
06-28-2002, 09:43 PM
mine has to do with a magnum h.o.t

about 3 mos ago i was polishing my tank and it was late and i was torn between getting much needed sleep and polishing more. i use the vacuum attachment so i can get every square inch. i decided to leave the filter on all night to really clean things up.

when i came down in the morning i noticed the filter making a strange noise. unfortunately the noise was a 1.5" snakeskin that must have swam up the tube and got stuck and was dead.


the worst part is that because of the towns water problems and my h.o.t breaking down, my h2o quality went down and when my new h.o.t was delivered the other day and the tank needed more polishing i looked at the fish and decided that since the smallest fish in the tank was over 2.5" that there was no way that it could happen again. i don't have to tell you what i saw when i came down to the tank the next morning-  my wifes last fish, a blue cobalt was stuffed in the tube. and this time i had taken the precaution to stick the tube in the bottom corner so that a fish couldn't accidently get caught. they must be attracted by the current and swim right up.

wife is pretty bummed. it was the last fish of 4 that i bought her for mothers day. one blue neon had a problem getting food and wasted away. another one along with a cobalt got a bug of some sort that took them out.

lessons learned
denny

Carol_Roberts
06-28-2002, 10:14 PM
Let's see, my most gruesome incident was similiar to Denny's.  

I was still in my fancy goldfish days and had a gorgeous calico black moor (with the protruding eyes). I left the room during a water change and when I returned he was stuck in the gravel tube. I had to bang on the tube to get him loose and he lost an eye as he dropped back into the tank. It was like a horrible, fright movie with blood coming out of his empty eye socket.  I put him in a Q-tank with Furan 2 and he lived.  The eye socket filled in with tissue and he rejoined the other goldfish. I'm amazed at how tough fish are.  I've picked Koi up off the ground and thrown them back in the pond and they've lived.

I've had a 135 gallon tank crack the front glass. . . .

I didn't get all the bleach out after cleaning my change water barrel and had discus turn pale, gasping at the top for air while I madly dashed thru the house putting all 14 or 16 into the 55 gallon that hadn't had a water change. . . .

Then there are the annoying ones, like coming home to a pool of brineshrimp on  your dresser or forgetting to turn the filter back on . . .

Carol :heart1:

06-28-2002, 10:18 PM
YES YES YES we do To!


#1 never used QT lost 62 adults 80 at 2.5" over 1000 fry! 6 breeding pairs

#2 overdose of formadahyde Burned 60 gold diamonds to death at 3"

#3 left the water running for hours freezing to death 60 snakes at 2"

#4 pulled bulk heads for W/cs never refilling to the next day LOST 12 red spotted yellows at $100 each.

#5 never checking the temp on My mixer valve W/c 50  leps at 2" with 120F water (fryed)

#6 thought I would use PP with out measureing it!
melted 3 breeding pairs!

#4 O so many More to Write! but HTH.


TakeCare'
Cary Gld!

P.S PLEASE no one do the math for Me THANKS!  :'(

Aquarius
06-28-2002, 10:22 PM
Hmm, I can relate to the last to from very recent happings. My 5 year old son decided to feed my fish, managed to feed 3 of my 5 tanks well I was at work. Needless to say, 2 cups of flake in a tank of any size isn't good! I managed to clean up two, but alass the salt water tank was too new and didn't make it, saved one fish. So remember, keep that food up HIGH! And to think, this little boy LOVES fish, has a tank of his own, and whats another one. I think I created a monster!

As to fish getting sucked into filters..I just started a new tank,125G with a Wet/Dry, which is my first sump setup after many other types. I never thought much of the flow from the CPR overflow box, yet I lost on small Discus after the poor thing must of got to close and in he went. Even with the fish screen on. The strange thing is, I've found my Buterfly fish twice bobing in the back of the overflow. Though without any damange.

So far like the wet/dry, but not the overflow!

-steve

Ryan
06-28-2002, 10:46 PM
:wasntme: Oh okay, you twisted my arm... guess I can tell my horror story.

I've always wanted to keep discus seriously... I used to keep LFS fish in community tanks but never really had a nice discus-only tank. I set up a 55 gallon and ended up with 8 pretty babies from Mike Wells.

Well, in all my years of fish keeping, I'd never even HEARD of the Nitrogen Cycle. The fish I'd kept in the past were less sensitive to ammonia/nitrite (as I found out later) and so I never noticed my tank was cycling after adding new fish. I assumed discus would be no different.

I bring 8 beautiful juvies home from the airport, plop them in the tank, and for a week or two all seems to be going well. Water changes everyday, feedings several times a day, and discus that seem to be growing and coloring out, although skittish constantly. I assume it's just new fish jitters.

A couple weeks into it, I notice some light scratching, and being a nervous first-time discus dad, I decided may I need to treat for flukes. I pick up QuickCure as I'm suggested, and start adding it to the tank after every water change.

Well, I wasn't aware that it would kill off my bio filter! :waaa: I guess that my sponges had slowly started to cycle (which would explain the skittish fish) but the water changes were keeping things from going haywire. Then the QuickCure goes ahead and kills off what little biofilter I have, and the tank goes downhill from there. I come home to cloudy water, cloudy eyes on my fish, dashing and darting... I frantically do water changes and begin to panic,... This goes on for days, no one's eating, I'm getting mixed advice online, etc. And yet no one thinks to ask about my bio filter, and I don't know enough about them to know it's non-existent.

To make a long, sad story short, I lose all 8 babies from Mike, and I'm devastated. I vow never to look at discus ever again. Then I spend a year doing nothing but lurking on boards and reading :book:...  Moral? Know the workings of a discus tank before jumping in... I didn't, and I paid for it severely.

Ryan

Rod
06-29-2002, 01:33 AM
The stupidist thing i did that i can think of is leaving a bottle of ammonia testing fluid on the glass lid of a breeding tank. The top wasn't secured , and the bottle tipped over and emptied into the aquarium. I can home to a dead breeding pair and 100 dead baby discus. Still sickens me to this day!!

I'll 2nd jimmys motion to never leave any chemical on top of your tank.

cichlidfan
06-29-2002, 04:13 AM
I know how everybody feels.
I did the same thing Rod did, left a bottle of cleaning fluid on top of one of the tanks in my system and whammo, next day bottle fell into one of the tanks and the fluid went right through the system killing all the fish I had in there.
Been very careful since. >:( :(

mikeos
06-30-2002, 10:09 AM
Good one brew,, ;D

Some good advice here.

This is already working....I was seriously concidering adding more fish w/o QT... dumb, but not unique it seems.

My worst... water change 3 heavily stocked tanks, take 4 days holliday away & come back to find I had left the heaters & filters swiched off. Total wipeout, the reason for several years without fish.


Still we're back now & the bug is worse than ever. ;D

mike

karinS
07-01-2002, 06:14 AM
Well we have had our share of disasters. A few years back we a a 90 gallon with 8 discus between 7 & 8 inches with a couple hugh clown loaches. We have a well and we had been having some problems with the pump and the conditioner. >:( So we finally got the problem fixed. ;D So I did a hugh water change and within hours everything in the tank was dead. :'( The only thing we could ever figure out that could have happened was that the conditioner let all the salt or whatever come in all all once. Have never had a problem before or since. Have a nice day. Karin :sunshine: :sunshine: :sunshine:

DarkDiscus
07-01-2002, 06:51 AM
Karin,

I wonder what kind of conditioner you are using?  We used to use Culligan to "soften" the water at my mom's house - which was terrible for my fish as the parameters were always different, so I would bypass the system to get straight tap water from the well, which was much more stable.

However I also used to get a "rust burp" whenever I bypassed the conditioning tank - a buildup of rust, crud and other chemicals would come out of the pipes for about 3 minutes.  You never know what is lurking there in the pipes!

John

Ekar_Ogrit
10-30-2002, 06:43 PM
Found this topic and thought I would add my 2 bits.

I have only kept Discus for about a year, and haven't had any deaths. I even have about 30 fry about a week and a half old!

Here are my two tragedies:

1. Bought a wal-mart stand for a 55 Gallon. Tank wobbled on it, but I figured if I bought it from the store it must be ok. Anyway the bottom cracked, and you know the rest of the story....

2. I enjoy planted tanks. I put 2 discus in a CO2 injected planted tank with a very light fishload. Well, that night I had my two red turqs go completely white! I quickly threw in an airstone and they recovered after a couple hours.

3. Same planted tank. Ph kept crashing about 3 days after each water change. Discus were not liking that at all! I couldn't figure it out? Well, Higher fishload and overfeeding caused a massive increase in bacteria which do that whole nitrogen cycle thing. Those bacteria use the carbonates which buffer your water for that process. Buffer goes and Ph drops! Cut down on the feeding and it seemed to cure all my problems.

Not as tragic as some of the others, but I HAVE tried learned from everyone else's mistakes that I read on this board.

11-05-2002, 12:41 AM
Hi all

Besides not doing QT I have done something really silly and stupid.

I have Drain's on my tanks and a separate hose with pump
to fill witch I hookup to the bins in the garage.
Well I drained the first tank, then I hocked up the filling hose (witch is separated from the drain) and sat down smoke a cigarette and wait until the tank is full.
After a few min. I was wondering why the filling was going so slow. I checked the pump (was ok) and wondered what the heck was going on.
Then my wife comes and asks what’s wrong? I told her something is not working right. She looks and says with a smile on her face " maybe you want to close the drain faucet BEFORE you start filling the tank”
Darn almost all the prepared water was gone.

Guess was one of those days ???

Ronald

BLUEKNIGHT
01-12-2003, 10:49 PM
Hi all
My disaster occured about 6 months ago I was not my fault. I had 6 ABD that i had bought from daryl when they were 2.0 inches and they when they were 5 inches i bought some really nice albino pearscale angels which i kept seprately. I had them for a week until my brother dumped them in my discus tank cause he thought they would look good and unfortunately i was out of town and when i came back the fish were messes up they had clamped up fins and there was whites pathces on the body 2 were dead and within the next 3 days i had lost all since then i have just kept fish that are compatible with discus.Also got in trouble for messing my brother up. ;D

RandalB
01-12-2003, 11:15 PM
Hi all!
I've never had a serious disaster with discus (Cross fingers Knock wood!) I have however had a couple losses due to quarantine issues. When you have your new fish isolated, make sure you use a completely different set of tools when changing water and cleaning.

I had my Blue turq tank hit with a bacterial infection of some type. I immediately isolated the infected fish (Lost one to stress of moving) and called a discus Guru (Thanks Cary!). He recommended large w/c 3-4X daily and some salt in the water. I did this and the turq's recovered. I was however using the same hose to fill all my tanks (chlorinated water what could it hurt?) and transferred the infection to a tank of 4" juveniles who immediately contracted the same disease. Despite the treatment, I lost a nice gold pigeon blood. LESSON LEARNED!

Another thing to recommend to beginners is: Research before getting into Discus.
The reason I haven't had a horrible disaster is because I researched discus for six months before buying one. They aren't that difficult to keep healthy but you have to give them what they need.

Last but not least: Don't believe everything they tell you at the LFS! Verify it before you act. I killed dozens of tropical fish on erroneous information from the employees of two large chain stores when I first started out. Consult the experts and keep from flushing your money.


Hope this helps,
RandalB

01-13-2003, 01:48 AM
ALWAYS USE A Q-Tank.

nuff said.

Miles

Anna Piranha
01-13-2003, 01:20 PM
My mother is 71 years old and has been keeping Discus for years. Well, she added another show tank to her collection and over time has found that it is just too much for her. This is a woman who just stopped climbing trees in her late 60's! She decided to give the tank and fish to my sister who has never kept Discus before. Well, my sister did a lot of things right in managing the new setup. What she didn't count on was PH bounce. She tested the PH when she placed the fish in the tank and it was fine. A couple of days went by and then Mom came to visit her. She noticed that the fish were very dark and hiding and they just didn't "seem right." My sister, not used to observing Discus behavior, thought this was normal. They checked the PH again and it had skyrocketed. Attempts to get it under control were futile and the whole tank was wiped out. For me this was a lesson about what buffering really means!

RichieE
01-13-2003, 01:28 PM
I had an experience very simular to Al's the only difference being the new fish were from a VERY popular breeder, I will NEVER take in new fish I cant QT even if they are free. Rich

acorn54
06-21-2003, 11:09 PM
here's my disaster stories
i started with discus in a new tank not knowing the importance of the nitrogen cycle. yes after 3 weeks of the 6 baby discus 5 died.
another story. i had a beautiful panda that was cooked. i was using a cheap heater and that was that. now every day when i feed i put my hand in the tanks to make sure the temperature is right. i don't trust heaters
another :trying to save money i used my brother's 15 year old 55 tank that was empty for some 12 years or more. of course the silicone sealant on the tank dried up. i put the fish in the tank and for 6 months all was fine then one night i hear a sound like niagra falls. sure enough one of the joints separated and water was gushing out.

Keith.L
06-23-2003, 12:24 AM
Not a particularly nastly one, but more on my inexperienced side... About 20 to 25 years ago, when I was a teenage I kept some tropical fish in a tiny tank of roughly only 2 gallon in size. It was winter and I only had an "old style" power-on/power-off heater.

Natually I was a mindless kid and I left the heater plugged in unattended. I came home from school and viola, I found my tiny fish tank turned into a cooking pot. Water turned milky white, with steam rising out on top of the tank, and dead fish bodies circulating around inside the tank following the current flow. Needless to say it took me a while to "enjoy" chowder again...

Recently I only started fish keeping again in early 2002. My problem is with my long hours at work and no space for more tanks in my tiny apartment. Last year I was on the road for several weeks at a time and I suddenly found my four 2-inches discus grew to about 4" in size. Too big for the small 8G tank that I had started with. I finally got a 23G tank early this year and, before I knew it, one pair was mature enough to lay eggs. (The unlucky non-spawning pair get to stay in the old 8G tank again.) This pair spawned 4 times already and all ended in failure, but shouldn't be too far off since their last attempt yielded 4 or 5 eggs with movement (wigglers). I do not look forward to the headaches of finding a new home for the fry, when the day comes. Chances are that will happy when I am on the road...

Sara
06-23-2003, 02:24 PM
As you all know I am new here but have raised angelfish for over 3 years.

I have an almost diseaster from angelfish keeping and breeding. I have city water.

I have from the beginning changed anywhere from 30 to 80% water daily. I have 14 tanks of angels anywhere from adults to breeding pairs and babies and juvies. My system was use the python to drain and clean the tanks and re fill them bucket brigade to keep the temps as exactly what is in the tank. So I started my daily routine and cleaned and drained all the tanks. It is very fast so the tanks are not drained for very long.

I got my buckets and declor ready to re fill the tanks and turned on the water and..... no water....... I ran to the laundry room to check taps etc. and all was well and really started to freak. Called the water department and asked what is going on, they asked me my area and then said they are flushing out all the systems as they do every year at this time and the water will be back on in about an hour but have to let it sit for at least 3 hours to let everything settle down.

I panicked and screamed at the guy for not sending out cards to let people know what you are doing and the date you are doing it !!!!!! Told him I have 14 tanks of angels that I breed and all he could say was sorry bout that.

Angels are not as delicate as discus and can tolerate water from the tap very easily but now I have 14 tanks that have very little water in them for at least the next 5 hours. I paced and watched the clock every minute for hours and finally was able to re fill the tanks. Thank goodness I didn't lose to many of the babies and juvies and the adults pulled through fine.

Moral of the story if you have city water give the water copmapny a call and ask when and where they are planning to flush out the systems.

Tristanyyz
06-24-2003, 10:55 PM
About 7 years ago, I started keeping discus. I received bad advice from a LFS manager who said, "the older the water, the better", and thats how I killed my discus.

After a long hiatus, I am back now with discus, for the past 5 months. I had a really great Checkerboard, named Checkerboard, who was completely healthy, but I decided to treat the tank for Hex, as my Novo Olinda wild was pooing funny stuff. I knew I should have put a power head in the tank...and above this, i medicated the tank in the morning, and didnt come home until the evening to see my checkerboard at the top of the tank and very dark. Still I didnt do anything, as i thought it was a reaction to Metronidazole. A few hours later, he was laying down on the bottom of the tank. I put him in another tank, with lots of airation, and held him next to the powerhead, he came to, and slowly started to swim around normally,but he still died in the early morning. I was very attached to that fish, as it was my first fish, getting back into discus. He was the leader of the tank, and grew fast. He didnt pick on anyone, all the other fish just sensed that he was the boss, he never had to fight anyone. Even when I put my wild adults in my show tank, he was still somehow the most inquisitive, and most assertive fish. :-\

I lost him due to inexperience. You try to minimize the stupid mistakes as much as possible, but they are all learning experiences.

ericNH
08-09-2014, 10:36 PM
Last post on this thread was 11.5 years ago. I wanted to say I'm really worried after reading all these posts now - I've recently added a few discus to my tank and there was NO qt whatsoever....but who's listening in here? This is a dead thread.

Rudustin
08-09-2014, 11:11 PM
Last post on this thread was 11.5 years ago. I wanted to say I'm really worried after reading all these posts now - I've recently added a few discus to my tank and there was NO qt whatsoever....but who's listening in here? This is a dead thread. I can tell you that quarantine is a must. Including plants. Have learned my lesson. Much to my dismay. Have lost fish that I loved by not using QT. You may have gotten away with it this time but you are playing Russian Roulette! Rufus

jeditait
08-15-2014, 11:42 PM
Great thread! I won't forget to QT :)

pcsb23
08-29-2014, 05:02 PM
Last post on this thread was 11.5 years ago. I wanted to say I'm really worried after reading all these posts now - I've recently added a few discus to my tank and there was NO qt whatsoever....but who's listening in here? This is a dead thread.Eric I think you can safely say you are the thread resurrection champion! :evilgrin:

fwiw I've never had any discus disasters, but I have created many learning opportunities ;)

Lilly
08-29-2014, 08:16 PM
Eric I think you can safely say you are the thread resurrection champion! :evilgrin:

fwiw I've never had any discus disasters, but I have created many learning opportunities ;)

Love it...to err is human...right...just need to learn from your mistakes :)

ericNH
08-29-2014, 08:27 PM
All too true :) I just stumbled back across this thread and had no idea anyone had posted! Cool - I gotta say that even though reading this got me all worked up about my fish I still think it offers valuable information. So I'm glad it's still relevant.

ericNH
08-29-2014, 08:30 PM
oh and btw I DO have a qt tank now heheh. Picked up 2 x 29 gal tanks at Pet Supplies, and thank you very much because I got the $1 per gallon sale tip-off right here on SD! I was out the door within 5 minutes of that first post on it haha

rickztahone
08-29-2014, 09:30 PM
Eric I think you can safely say you are the thread resurrection champion! :evilgrin:

fwiw I've never had any discus disasters, but I have created many learning opportunities ;)

Yup, I agree, the oldest resurrection I have ever seen was 10yrs. on another forum.

kris2341
09-15-2014, 06:06 PM
This was a nice yet painful read, I will probably put up my own stories once my discus problems move to a new phase!