Originally Posted by
Dutch dude
Hi There,
Thanks so much for this artickle. Aldough it is not perfect translated it hold enough info to understand what is written.\
Some of you might know I was on the point of quiting discus until I got a spawn (Lago Amana x Nhamunda red). The reason was I bought many discus in the last couple of years and time after time I lost fish. I had the issues described in this artickel. It started with a healthy fish and after some time the first signs set in like described in the artickle. Spread fins, turn dark, skittish and jumpy. After a couple of day's the fish darted around the tank like a mad one, acting like it was followed by something, turn sidewards and seem to look at the bottom or surface and starting to bounce very hard into the tankwalls. At the time I kept my fish at 28C, and 160 micro Siemens doing a 70% water change every other day. I talked to Hustinx Belgium and they explained all those large water changes were no good to wilds. They also adviced to raise the temp to 30C or 31C and a conductivety of 330 microSiemens. I'm not the person who takes everything for granted but I at least could try and see what happened. Slowly I raised the temp and also the conductivity. A lot of people told me wilds should be at a low conductivity so I was very carefull. Once I hit the 250 microSiemens my fish start to look more comfortable. I still did not want to decrease the water changes becouse discus need clean water right? I still lost fish. The more water changes I did the more issues I seem to get. Desperate I did reduced the water changes and hoped my discus would make it. And yes,....things went more and more stable. I found that 2 or 3 times a week 30% to 40% wc was the amount the fish prefered. But to be able to keep the water clean enough I need to pay more attention to feeding. In the end I had 3 fish left in a 90 gallon tank. Two of them paired up and are still doing great.
So back to the article I can confirm a lot of things and even the best looking fish (often the dominant one) was alway's the one I lost.
The article does not mention temperature but I'm fairly sure it is involved as well. It might be related to metabolism in combination with the food.
My current routines:
I do 2 times a week 40% water change
Temp 30C
mixture of RO and tap water (50/50)
conductivity 350 microSiemens
2 feeds a day