Sick Discus please help - inflamation in nostill and breathing on one gill only

Hello, I have a question about my discus male - he is sick for 1 month now and I never manage to cure it… It always starts with red inside the nostrils and on another day he is breathing heavily through one gill only. I can add a video but I don’t know how.
I treated with Prazi and Esha 2000 for 3 days always, and after a week the symptoms gets back. I was advised to add Nitronidazole 1200mg/100l but it makes no effect. Maybe someone experienced same issue and can advise me?

Thank You in advance!

Hello, I will post on this forum so I may receive help from you guys, maybe someone has experienced this and nows how tondeal with it! Any help is very much appreciated!

1. Please explain the problems with your fish. When did you notice the problems and did anything unusual happen that you think started them?[/B]
I noticed it a month ago after introducing 3 Ancitrus fish and lowering the aquarium temperature to 27C

2. Symptoms (i.e. turning dark, excess slime, not eating, clamped fins, flashing, darting, clamped gills, white/yellow/green poop, hiding, headstanding or tailstanding, white on tips of fins, rotting or fungus, blisters/white zits on fish, bloated, cloudy eyes, wounds).
Everything starts with one nosetril red and inflamed, later comes the second nosetril on the other side of the fish. At a later day Discus is breathing heavily on one gill and other gill is shut off completely. Discus shows no discoloration/darkening


3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.
I dosed Esha 2000 (multi antibacterial treatment) and Esha Gdex (Praziquantel) 2.5mg/l for 3 days. It helped alot but after a week all symptoms came back


Tank/Water

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
The tank is 450 litres, 150x50x60cm, about 2 year old tank with 3 17-18cm discus fish left

5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).
I change about 40-50% water every other day

6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
The tank is running for almost 2 years, it has sand gravel, about 2cm thick, which gets vacumed two/three times a week

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.
I use purely RO water but bring back KH and GH with RedSea Alkaline buffer, Calcium and Magnesium solutions. Also add DiscusCode by Brightwell Aquatics to remineralize with trace elements.

8. What type/brand water conditioner do you use? Do you add it to the tank or aging barrel? How much do you use?
—

9. Parameters and water source.
RO water

Note: Water Parameters are important in diagnosing problems within a tank. If you don't own test kits for the following information, you can purchase them, test your parameters and post this info as soon as possible.


- temp 27C

- ph 7.4

- ammonia reading 0

- nitrite reading 0

- nitrate reading 5-10 mg/l

What type of water or combinations of water sources do you use? If it is an RO/tap/well water mix, please list percentages in the mix.

- well water 0%

- municipal water 0%

- RO water 100%


10. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.
1 month ago I added 3 Ancitrus super red fish

11. Please tell us what you feed your fish and how often. This can be critical information for solving the problem so be as specific as you can.
I feed frozen sea-food based food once a day fortified by GarlicPower, Vitamins and 3-6-9 omega acids, followed by Tropical D-50 Granules and in the evening they get Tropical Soft-Line America granules

12. Include any pictures or videos you have which shows the symptoms. If you can't add them to this post, please provide a link to them.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UiR...w?usp=drivesdk

Your video is not working. This would be a big help, even a clear close up photo.

Since you have new arrivals, this could be cross contamination of some kind

Hello! Here is the best photo I could take

Quote:

---

Everything starts with one nosetril red and inflamed, later comes the second nosetril on the other side of the fish. At a later day Discus is breathing heavily on one gill and other gill is shut off completely. Discus shows no discoloration/darkening

---

Yours are Pidgeon Blood so they won't darken throughout the body, but I do see some peppering which is the PB's way of darkening. The red I see in the photo isn't uncommon or that bad, however it may be more pronounced by the naked eye. This could be a sign of stress but it's hard to tell because we don't know how peppered they are naturally. I would be more concerned about the gills.

Quote:

---

I feed frozen sea-food based food once a day fortified by GarlicPower, Vitamins and 3-6-9 omega acids, followed by Tropical D-50 Granules and in the evening they get Tropical Soft-Line America granules

---

This is a good variety of foods. Are they still eating good? How long have you had the discus?

Quote:

---

I use purely RO water but bring back KH and GH with RedSea Alkaline buffer, Calcium and Magnesium solutions. Also add DiscusCode by Brightwell Aquatics to remineralize with trace elements.

---

Is there a reason you do all this work? Is your tap water bad? In most cases regular tap is just fine for discus.

It sounds like there is some irritation or inflammation in the gills and it began soon after the plecos were introduced. One guess is flukes, another is bioload. You take care of the water really well, but in a tank with substrate it's hard to get rid of any parasite infestation.

Do you have another tank you can use as a hospital tank? I would isolate them and keep up your routine for a week and see if there's any improvement. If there isn't then I would try treating for flukes. Adding regular salt at 3 TBS per 10g for a week will help with gill inflammation.

Also, have a look at this thread http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...-Are-Important

Hello! Thank you so much for the info! it really helped a lot!

They are a little peppered because I was told I have dark driftwood and dark rocks in tank, also when I had black substrate and black backround they were much more peppered, but clearly cleared when I changed the backround and substrate to light coloured! I have these discus for about 13-14 months now and they were all healthy until plecos were introduced…

Yes, he is still eating, maybe not so much as when he was healthy, and also he prefers granules a lot more.

I’m using RO water because my tap water has around 10-15mg/l nitrates, some phosphates and over 50mg/l silicates which makes my tank a nesting place for diatoms.

I can add praziquantel (as it is the only legal drug here in Lithuania) for gill flukes and maybe add a little of salt as per your recomendations. Also I have a 100 litre tank to seperate him but will it be not too small for 17-18cm discus?

Also, I was told by the breeder of these fish that red nostrils could be of him constantly fighting with other male and bumping a driftwood (he hitting it agresivly to clean it for spawning)
Also they advised me to raise the temp to 30-32C as 27 is a little to cold. They actually lived in 30C all the time, but I lowered the temp when plecos were introduced
Also there is a link to the video, but it’s pretty large file (50mb) so you need to download it to watch :)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UiR...w?usp=drivesdk

3 days is not enough time for antibiotics to finish it's course. It might be long enough to alleviate some of the symptoms but not cure it. With the fluke treatment one treatment is not enough; you won't get the eggs. You'll need to dose again after after a week or so.

Thank You so much! Now I will do a 10 day course of antibiotics and treat with prazi two times do get rid of the eggs!

28c is ideal for discus but 30 isn't too much either. Yes, 3 discus in a 100l is pretty a tight fit.

I just saw your other post and I agree that antibiotics should always complete the course. You may also want to treat for flukes but I would wait a week to more between treatments because you can damage internal organs with too many meds too quickly. As a matter of fact, I'm going to merge the two threads so we can all stay on track...

Hello! I treated and sold the three discus, they were very beloved but they are now happily swiming in 1.2 tons aqarium with 14 other large discus!

I desinfected the tank with potasium permanganate, strong actibacterial medicine and hight temperature of 38C (Two heaters set on highest temperature)! Changed 90% of water and added Carbonates, Calcium, Magnesium and Trace Discus elements to restore water values of 6dKh, 6dGh, ph of 7.5 and temperature to 30C

I bought one more filter (now combined near 4000l/h) for 450 litre tank.
Also I ordered new 8 smaller fish (11-13cm) of Snow Leopard strain! Can’t wait to put them in the tank! I also removed sand and I have now bare bottom tank for growing these beuties with some driftwood and rocks and I will even plant some anubias and ferns for them!
These are the selected fish waiting to be shipped from Germany on Monday!

Will keep posted of the new arrival!