Lost six of fifteen discus over the last month... HELP!

Problem

1. Please explain the problems with your fish. When did you notice the problems and did anything unusual happen that you think started them?

First in the beginning of July, I lost two calico discus about a week apart. Noticed nothing prior to them being dead. Now starting the beginning of August things got bad. Had six or eight sick at the same time all many different symptoms (detailed in #2). They have been one by one dying over the last 3 weeks...

I want to make it clear that all these discus have been in the tank together for at least 8 months after being properly quarantined (started with 6 discus, 2 years ago, steadily adding over that time - last ones in (3) were that 8 months ago. NO NEW ADDTIONS TO THE TANK... fish or plants.

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).

I must start by saying I have never once saw ANY of my discus poop, they must be shy as I have not once seen one poop.

The turquoise varieties - 5 of them (about 4-5 inches), turned black and started sitting at the top of the tank next to the black over flow in groups. Clamped fins and slime coat appeared to be coming off. They kept dying, about one a week. One appears to be on the road to recovery, getting color back and eating better, but still not 100%

A white butterfly (5") - 1 - stopped eating got very thin, bacterial nodes showing up on the skin. never hid too much. This one is starting to eat again and fatten back up, but still not 100%

A yellow/red (orange) (6-7") - 1 this one hurt as he is one of my originals and had no apparent symptoms, found him dead this morning.

A wild (probably a Tefe) (4") - 2 - one dead/one recovered. They were properly quarantined and have been in the tank for over a year. both turned black with clamped fins, hid, no eating.

3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.

Because basically near 10 our of 15 were sick at the same time, I decided to medicate the entire tank which was a large undertaking as it is a 450 gallon tank. As everything gets crazy confusing and even more, the more you read on the internet (yes, even here on SD). I did the following...

Began water changes, either 30% (which is 100 gallons) or 60% (which is 200 gallons) on a daily or every other day basis, based on medications that were being administered (following their instructions)

First, Metroplex (with Focus) in food for the ones that were eating and General Cure for the whole tank (as it has Metro and Prazi in it), Hoping to hit the ones that weren't eating. As you could imagine, this was highly expensive, so one course of that.

Second, PraziPro as I was of the thought process that this was external parasites (flukes?) based on clamped fins and quick breathing. ran 7 days of this while replacing partial amounts after water changes. didn't do much.

Third, feeding Metroplex based on the pimples on the white one and some lateral line erosion on the some of the blues. at this point, after the PraziPro, the blues looked terrible and started to die. I continued to feed Metroplex and only stopped two days ago (the big orange one died today)

Fourth, tried Paraguard, this seemed to help with the blue and wild ones and some started to come back. Looked better, but still were dying... just at a slower pace.

Fifth, throughout was putting in Stress Guard every other day, just because I felt they were getting whacked so hard with medication that this might help with the medicine induced and disease induced stress.

Most of the remaining fish are eating well, look good, and seem to be ok except for a white-faced yellow, who looks fine and is eating but hides a lot.

Tank/Water

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.

450 Gallon about 1 1/2 years old. Holds (or held) 15 discus, 2 huge roseline sharks, 6 large SAE, a green pleco (never see), 20 red eye tetra, and 50 netrite snails (give or take), some invasive MTS(but their numbers have dropped). Everybody gets along great and I have not once had a issue with compatibility

5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).

Prior to outbreak 2x per week, 100 gallons (30%). Since outbreak 30% everyday or every other day based on meds.

6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?

Year and a half. Substrate is Safe-T-Sorb (oil-dry, fired clay) about 2 inches thick. Is vacuumed regularly. Have a few Anubias and Jave fern in the tank as well.

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.

No, Use treated R/O water.

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

R/O remineralized with Equilibrium and brought to 6.8-7.2PH with Seachem Alkaline/Acid Buffer. Has worked great for a year and a half.

9. Parameters and water source;

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 __84__

- ph ___6.8-7.2__

- ammonia reading __0__

- nitrite reading __0__

- nitrate reading __20__

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 ____

- municipal water ____

- RO water _X___


10. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.

None

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.

Homemade beef heart mix - (BH, Salmon, Whitefish, Spinach, Garlic, Vitamin, Krill powder) once a day. Blackworm flakes once a day. Sometimes substitute the BW falkes for BW flakes, frozen brine shrimp, frozen mysis shrimp, and VERY VERY rarely frozen bloodworms.

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.

I don't have any pictures as I thought I had it under control... the OG big guy dying today was the last straw. What the hell is happening?

Take a pic please. The thing that shout at me is the nitrate reading of 20. They say that 10 is OK but I like mine to be 5. That suggests that more WCs are necessary. I'm suspicious of the Equilibrium and the Seachem buffers but I have to look them up and refresh my memory. Why are you not using aged tap? lA pH swing of 6.8 to 7.2 is what I have with my water and I found it necessary to age. I use no buffers, just aged tap 30% WC daily. I only use RO when I need to lower my TDS for a breeding pair.

I've kept Discus since 1989 but I'm that kind of guy that is never technical just goes by eye. It has worked well for me cause I don't think I've ever lost a Discus since my first batch that I can recall, unless they jumped out or froze to death when I was travelling with them. Consulted my Dad he has done a lot more than myself!

A HUGE Tank, with fish from all sorts of places? Red Flag for me... Best to have all discus from one place!

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).

This could be anything WHOA! Discus Plague in the ole days. What you should do: Do a Phosphate test?

Rather than go through a lot! My main goal would to save my discus lives, I'd take them all and put them in a breeder 40. Fresh water, Aged Water. If you want to continue to use the same buffers go ahead, if you got regular tap. I'd use regular tap to get to the TDS I wanted. Use tap to control your TDS rather than the buffers right now.

Then, for treatment MYSELF... I'd start out with PP if you know how to do it, if you don't know how Simply with teach you. Just a personal opinion but I don't want to kill your fish here but you see too far gone for salt and water changes. Along with the PP follow the directions what Simply tells you how to use it... My personal opinion when you're done with the PP treatments and hopefully we're seeing results.

Then continue on with the water changes constantly until the discus are back to where you want them. As far as treating the main tank you need to talk to someone who handles plants and such and everything else in it. I likely dump it and scrub it down and pp it and start afresh. Plants and fish and buddies together...

Lost another one! This one was one of my last turquoise strains! This one was still dark, but seemed to be getting better.

Quite honestly, I am choosing the nuclear option at this point. I am going to remove plants and then do a PP treatment of the entire tank. Have spent the last 3 hours reading up on the process and am pretty confident I can handle it, doesn't look that complicated. Just have to watch things as they progress.

Thursday is D-Day for my tank. Hopefully it will be successful.

I agree with what Liz says, but I don't believe any single thing in your questionnaire points to a lethal issue. It's hard to narrow down and it's extremely difficult to treat a large tank, let alone a tank as big as yours. This is a well established tank with no new additions so CC isn't really an issue but can't be ruled out.

20ppm nitrates is higher than preferred but not deadly. The ph swings could be an issue depending on how quickly it changes.

Heavy breathing and clamped fins can be a result of many things, but even with your successful track record in adjusting your RO water, I tend to believe this is a water quality issue, although bacterial or parasites can't be ruled out either. You report that ammonia is 0, can you re-test this? Have you had a chance to examine any feces under a microscope? HTLLE can be caused by anything from diet, parasites or water quality. Phosphates are also a question...

Since it's so hard to narrow things down in such a large tank, nuking it may be a good way to go but it certainly would be nice to find out what the real issue is so it doesn't repeat itself. If you do PP the tank, I would move the fish into a smaller tank for their treatment. It's much easier to control their treatment in a smaller tank.

I do wonder why you're using RO water in the first place. It's really not needed in community or show tanks unless source water is really off the charts and tap water is 100% easy to control.

You have so much going on and it's hard to pinpoint, as you seem well aware...

I would like to see some photo's as well...

I watched a video were they talk about the anaerobic bacteria that get under things. when you clean the tank suddenly and bunch die. I had that happen in a community planted tank about a week ago. (no discus) Moved it and cleaned it, 20 dead fish. This sounds very similar.

Hi

Are you running any Co2 on the tank?