New discus sick - need help please

[1fishnut]

Hi everyone, I am new to discus and need help. Have not been able to figure out how to make our new family members feel better and would greatly appreciate your advice. I think everything is covered in the questionnaire. I probably have more info than needed since I am trying to cover the questions that I see on other posts.
Thank you!

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

Some of my new juvenile discus are not doing well. 10 2.5 inch discus arrived 4 wks ago from Discus Hans. 4 are clearly thriving and are well over 3 inches now and are eating and pooping machines, 2 are doing OK, but not growing as quickly and the other 4 are not visibly eating, doing a lot of hiding and are looking thin. They do swim with the group when not hiding, but show almost no interest in food when others are pigging out. The four that have issues are 2 ea scribbled and brilliant turquoise. The 6 that are OK are 2 ea blue diamonds, marlboro red and flachen.

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).
Not eating and growing and getting thin. One is turning dark. At least two have white poop. I would not say that is it stringy. Some appears to be normal shape except all white, and some looks transparent and slightly fluffy. Not easy to catch them at it since they don’t seem to eat. There is occasional flashing against the inlet tubes, etc. but no visible skin, fin or gill issues. There are black fin ‘margins’ that are more pronounced on some of them.

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

Completed Api General Cure treatment per box instructions (10 packets per use, twice, waiting 48 hrs between dosing for 110g tank). Finished a week ago and no change. Was thinking they may have caught something that was not apparent in prior tank occupants.

Tank/Water

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
110g
10 2.5 in initially, now 2.5 - 3+, still 10.

5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).
30% daily
6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
Several years with prior occupants (most recently 1 iridescent shark, 1 angel, 1 bgk, 6 denisoni, 5 giant danios, 6 neon rosy barbs) slowly relocated to a bigger tank. No issues with any of them. Prior to arrival of the discus all exc. 3 siamese algae eaters moved, gravel removed, tank washed out with tap water, filters (FX5 and dual bio-wheel) rinsed in tank water. The algae eaters moved wk. 2 (competing with discus for food and being obnoxious in general).

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.
No aging, ph swing barely noticeable (slight change in tint in 7.4-7.8 range after 24 hr aging)

8. 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 __85F___

- ph ___7.4-7.8__

- ammonia reading _0___

- nitrite reading _0___

- nitrate reading _5-10___

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 __X, treated with API stress coat+__

- RO water ____


9. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.
No

10. 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.

11. They get fed 4 times/day (5 on weekend) with cobalt flakes, frozen brine shrimp, bloodworms and beefheart, thawed in a cup with tank water prior to dumping in.

[1fishnut]

Here I am again. Not getting a single response to the original post, I thought I'd try one more time... An update first. After the original post two of the original 'problem' fish slowly wasted away. Also one red marlboro stopped eating, was hiding in the corner and developed long clear poop. Completed another round of General Cure (longer and at a higher concentration per postings here). Waited a few more days and by that point one of the originally sick red scribbled got better, but the other two did not. Decided to not treat the entire tank any more and moved the two ailing fish into a newly acquired 20 g hospital tank and put them through a course of triple sulfa antibiotics. Lost the 'skinny' brilliant turq a couple of days after the move. The red marlboro hung in there and after the course of antibiotics and 50% daily water changes for three weeks finally started showing interest in food and progressed to healthy appetite and normal looking poop. Amazingly enough, it does not look all that thin after a long hunger strike, but is smaller than the rest of its peers in the larger tank - probably somewhat stunted at this point.
Now I am trying to figure out when it is ready to go back to the 110 g tank to join the rest of the discus. It has been eating well and acting perky for almost 2 weeks, but is slightly smaller than the smallest of the 6 discus in the larger tank and I am not sure it will be as aggressive going after the food as the rest of them. At the same time it is probably not healthy for it to be by itself for too long. Is it ready to move or should I wait longer? Thanks!

[discuspaul]

A belated welcome to the forum, fishnut.
It would have been best to have completed the disease questionnaire so that members here would have more information to better help you initially.
However, given that your remaining discus in the main tank are seemingly doing fine and that your quarantined fish has apparently recuperated, is eating, and now has normal bm coloration, it would seem appropriate to now put him back into the main tank with the others. Maintain your daily wcs and observe the group carefully for the next while, and see how it goes.
Best of luck to you.

[1fishnut]

Thank you for your response, Paul. The move to the main tank went fine - the little guy is not at all bashful and is actually chasing much bigger tank mates around and is getting his(?) share of food. It appears that all is well. Thanks for your help!

For future reference, was I supposed to do something different with the decease questionnaire as opposed to pasting it in my posting?

[pcsb23]

...

For future reference, was I supposed to do something different with the decease questionnaire as opposed to pasting it in my posting?

Nope, I just think this was a thread that slipped through the net so to speak.

[nc0gnet0]

most recently 1 iridescent shark, 1 angel, 1 bgk, 6 denisoni, 5 giant danios, 6 neon rosy barbs) slowly relocated to a bigger tank. No issues with any of them. Prior to arrival of the discus all exc. 3 siamese algae eaters

I think part of the problem lies here, but as I am not familiar with many of these fish I can only speculate. Be much better to have just discus, perhaps a small clean-up crew at least to start with. You said you removed the gravel, but in the context of the sentence I am not sure if you removed it to clean and then replaced, or if you removed and tossed it and now have a BB tank?

[discuspaul]

Initially fishnet, I got the impression, perhaps incorrectly, that you had moved or were moving the other fish to another tank, but now it seems that you may have moved only the SAE's.

So Rick has made a good point in his post immediately above.

All of the other fish, with the possible exception of the rosy barbs, are not good tank-mates for discus, most particularly since your discus are just small youngsters, some of which were likely quite stressed over the past couple of weeks by those other fish, thus causing them to succumb to health issues.

If that's the case, you should re-home those tank-mates to another tank, or much more preferably, move the discus to their own bare-bottom tank, as Rick suggests.

[nc0gnet0]

At last, after two thousand years of research, the illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator. At last...

[discuspaul]

At last, after two thousand years of research, the illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator. At last...

?? Care to explain ?

[1fishnut]

Initially fishnet, I got the impression, perhaps incorrectly, that you had moved or were moving the other fish to another tank, but now it seems that you may have moved only the SAE's.

So Rick has made a good point in his post immediately above.

All of the other fish, with the possible exception of the rosy barbs, are not good tank-mates for discus, most particularly since your discus are just small youngsters, some of which were likely quite stressed over the past couple of weeks by those other fish, thus causing them to succumb to health issues.

If that's the case, you should re-home those tank-mates to another tank, or much more preferably, move the discus to their own bare-bottom tank, as Rick suggests.

Sorry if my write up was too confusing. All of the gravel was moved to a bigger tank along with all other fish (except SAEs) before the discus moved in, so the discus have been in a BB tank from day 1. Agree with your comment that they would have been better off by themselves from the beginning. The three small SAEs, which were the only other fish in the tank for the first few days, were getting fatter with every meal and were zooming around a bit too much, so I moved them out also. I now have the 7 discus all by themselves in a 110g BB tank and everyone appears to be happy. Thinking about getting the replacements now.
Thank you all for your words of wisdom! I am sure I have plenty more things to learn about discus.