Darting again.........

Well my discus has done it again. I really thought this time he was a goner. I saw him laying at the bottom of the tank but never saw or heard him darting. About 10 minutes later he was quiet but pretty much back to normal. Before I went to bed he was swimming around with the other two.

Around 2:30am my oldest daughter woke me up as he was darting and hitting the top of the lid so hard she thought he was going to get the lid open. I look at him and there he was sideways at the top all dazed.......... Got up this morning and he’s sleeping with the other two like normal. So before I left I turned the temp up to 89 degrees...... I had it at about 87. Seeing how the heat seemed to work last time figured I would try again but not quite as high. Came home today and he’s eating and acting as normal as can be.

I have to rule out WC’s being the cause as I have not done one in two days. I checked parameters last night and again this afternoon, all is good... 0 Ammonia, 0 nitrites, 10 nitrates and 6.5 Ph. For anyone who hasn’t read my last post my Ph has always been that low and seems to stay that way. So it’s consistent.

The more I read the many posts on this, the more baffling it seems to be. And if this is something that needs to be treated it just leaves me wondering what it should actually be treated with!

I thought I would update again as I know there are quite a few out there dealing with the same issue. It’s just so frustrating!

Damn, sorry to hear that. Really hoped you had a handle on this. Wish I had more to offer, Good luck. Certainly does sound seizure like. Problem is that if there was a small stroke due to a bubble thrombus, that could have resulted in a focus for future seizures, at least in humans. Have no idea how heat would positively affect that, positive response to heat suggests possible parasitic source of CNS irritation and makes a bacterial or viral source much more unlikely. In addition bacterial CNS infections usually are rapidly fatal, viral not as much.

The sequential nature of this does suggest an infectious cause rather than environmental. I wish I had a good idea what the magic bullet treatment is but other than referring back to some of the stuff tried as described in prior threads, no great ideas.

Do you know the tds?

Is there anything you can think of that has changed at all, new decorations, is your water treated and with what , chlorimines or whatever else they put in it nowadays, are you using a water conditioner with your water changes, just anything you can think of that may have changed

Jeanne

It does look like seizures from what I've seen from the way these fish act. I have had four new 4.5" do this; all from a breeder from Vietnam. They did not pass this on to my other discus. But took seizures one by one til all 4 died. I've heard of others with this so called Whirlling Disease and the out comes were always fatal.

Hi Chimama, how long did you do the heat/salt treatment the first time?
Pat

Hi Chimama, sorry to hear that your discus is still having this issue, I lost several due to this same disease. I cured mine by aging and heating my water in my water storage barrel, using only cold tab water. When refilling the tank I made sure that the hose is not in the water and is above the water so it sprays/splashes water while filling. I have not encountered this issue since.

I had seen one of my discus rammed straight into the glass and knocked itself out, laid at the bottom of tank motionless for almost half a minute then slowly revive itself out of it, hid in the corner for a bit then all is normal again.

What amazes me is that, this one discus went on and spawned 20 times. She is on her 20th spawn and fry just went free swimming this morning.
(hope I have better luck this time around with attachment).

Best of luck to you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Second Hand Pat

Hi Chimama, how long did you do the heat/salt treatment the first time?
Pat

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Hi Pat,

I did the heat and salt for 10 days......... reason why I turned down the heat to 88 was because one of my others was “yawning” a lot and I thought maybe the heat was getting to him. I do have 2 air stones, one on each side of the tank. The yawning stopped by that evening after lowering the temp a bit. Do you think I should go back up to 90 again?

For those of you asking about my water.......... I have well water and use a python for water changes. As of right now I don’t have room to set anything up to age my water. Water goes back into tank through the python at the same temp as the tank. I use prime with every water change. Right now I’m keeping water changes to only 20% and checking parameters constantly to make sure those numbers stay good.

And I do agree that these episodes do look like seizures. And I feel bad for him when it happens wishing I could help him. Then when it’s all over and he’s rested he’s back to normal.