Listless floating/swimming- help quick please!

[Rachael702]

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

3" yellow discus has had questionable behavior. Started when I added a new school of juvies 2 weeks ago. All new fish doing well. YellowFish began with stand off behavior. Occasionally he will swim with others. Sometimes hides and faces back wall. Around the beginning of this, he had bloat. I reduced feeding from 2x a day to 1x a day. Bloat went away. Appetite came back. Swimming with others again.
One week ago, stand off behavior, hiding began again. Went ahead and quarantined 3 days ago. Progressively is getting worse. Listless behavior has become more like floating around, can hardly call his movement swimming, and leaning against a piece of drift wood, at the bottom of the tank. I'm worried he's on the last limb, not sure if I can save him.

It's worth noting that a very similar thing happened to a red marlboro I had previously, about a 6 weeks ago. I also lost a good bit of my community tank: 2 swordtails, 2 discus (the marlboro and a bright blue one, brand new to my tank bought at the same time as the yellow one I have now.) Lost 2 snails as well. LFS thought it to be high phosphates. (after testing they were a 10 on the API test scale- the highest on the chart.) Steve from Mac's discus believed it to be the Flourite substrate. Never did really understand the problem. Put all surviving in a quarantine tank, and did 3 100% water changes. Everything seemed fine after adding all fish back to the display tank. I added a new school of (8) 2-2.5" discus, ordered from MacsDiscus. All but one made it. He was fine the first few days, then had the same listless behavior and died within three days.

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. Clamped gills? They are a little red and shallow breathing. Not sure on the color of poop. No white spots, wounds, zits, rot, etc. Bloated about a week ago but reduced feeding and it went away. Color is very faded.

3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.
None so far.


Tank/Water

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
Tank is about 1 year.
Other fish are:
5 cories
1 black ghost knife fish.
7 new juvie discus.

5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).
50% every 7-10 days. I watch nitrate levels to make sure they aren't above 10ppm.

6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
8 month successful community tank. recently (a month ago) did 3 100% water changes.
Substrate is mostly black fluorite in a minimally planted tank. Depth is about 3". Front center of tank is white sand, about 2".

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.
Just began doing this. Tap water is 7.5 ph right out of the tap. After about a day, ph is a 7- 7.2. Tank water is currently 6.5.

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.

display tank: Quarantine tank: Temp: 89, ph: 7.6, ammonia: 0, nitrate: 0, nitrate: 0.

- temp __88___

- ph __6.5___

- ammonia reading __0__

- nitrite reading __0__

- nitrate reading _10___

Water change later tonight.


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 __50%__

- RO water __50%__


9. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.
New school of 8 discus 2 weeks ago. 1 died within a week, showing similar listless behavior, no other symptoms I could tell.
2 are in quarantine with yellow discus. They have a redness around the gills and base of pectoral fins. Otherwise seem very healthy.
Added a bunch of new plants a few days after the new discus arrived.

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.

trying to download video to you tube, but it's taking forever. Will try to upload if I can.

[nc0gnet0]

Start first by lowering tank temp to 82 degrees (slowly) and doing an 80 % water change follwed by 50% water changes DAILY.

Your water change routine is grossly insufficient. ( I know your going to tell me you water parameters are perfect-trust me, they are not).

Next, stop adding new fish to a sick tank.

Will wait to see the video.

[Rachael702]

Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately the yellow discus didn't make it over night.
Will try again later today to get video posted. What is your reasoning on lowering the temp? I'm happy to try your advise and will start the process now, but I also like to learn while I'm at it. I absolutely won't argue your point on water quality. Yes the API tests are showing water quality within ideal parameter, but I also see what is happening to my fish! So it makes sense. I'm a beginner and will definitely make all kinds of mistakes, but I do listen to common sense. I will start water changes this evening as well.

To clarify, new fish were added under the assumption my tank was clean, ready, and existing fish were all ok. No parasite, disease, etc was pin pointed at the time. I thought the 3x 100% water changes would be sufficient to clear things up, mainly the suspected phosphate problem. I questioned the validity of that but decided to try one thing at a time. Dropped phosphates by 50% and added ROWA, and a phosphate removing filter. In a week I saw nothing suspicious in the QT, so I thought it would be fine to move ahead, and returned fish to main tank. In the week following I saw nothing specific that I knew of that would indicate disease. I might have missed something, or been mistaken, and there was a parasite bacteria etc involved after all. Maybe I should have waited longer to add new fish. But I wouldn't carelessly add new fish to a sick tank if that was your impression. The current problems began with the yellow discus when I added the new ones.

So now no one else is in an "911" situation... but here some new things I've noticed since yesterday's post.

Clearish poop for one of the 2 fish still in quarantine. Darting on the second. Also still the issue of redness at the base of the pec fins and around the gills, for which I will begin your recommendations.
I was checking for unusual fish poo in the main tank last night, and my Red Spotted Green looked like he was pooping little brown worms!!?? Never seen or heard of that before. I couldn't catch him before I left for work (night shift) to get a better look at this weird poop, so I'm not sure if it really was worms or what was going on. This morning when I got home I noticed him darting, and really flicking his dorsal fin. I feed live blood worms and I have recently been told they can introduce parasites to the tank that can be hard to get rid of. Ever heard of this?


Question... the 80% then 50% daily water changes... Are you recommending that for the quarantine tank only? Or both? It seems like both should be in order...?
In light of the weird poop and darting fish in the main tank, and reading posts here about beginners sticking to bare bottom tanks, the suspicion of fluorite causing previous problems, I have thought it might be best for my immediate and long term goals to go ahead and clean out the substrate and plants and go bare bottom on my 55 gallon, put all discus and corys in there and proceed with treating the tank as a whole? Other wise, it seems like I would be doing just what you mentioned- putting treated and healthy fish (assuming I will get them better) back in to a sick tank. I'd already been thinking of doing this anyway, seeing the issues I'm having. I'd like some clarity on this before I start the water changes this evening. It would be much more manageable to do all these water changes on one bare bottom tank. I'll have tonight only this week to devote a large amount of time to this, so I want to get the most progress out of it. Your thoughts? I REALLY do love keeping a beautiful healthy tank, and have had my heart set on a planted discus tank for awhile, so I decided to just go ahead and give it a shot out the gate and learn as I go. Scaling back to a bare bottom for now might be best for now.


In your experience what kind of water changes are needed regularly to maintain thriving discus? I should probably post these questions in the beginner's forum. I will also begin going through the planted tank forum, and will search for more answers there. There are always a number of different points of view, and I'm interested in hearing yours on these matters. I welcome a balance of the raw truth, constructive criticism, and positive encouragement for a newbie!
Thanks again for your feed back.

[pcsb23]

Most people run their discus tanks at too a high a temperature, whilst it is true that discus love the warmth 82f is fine. Raising the temperature accelerates everything, i.e. respiration, energy use, waste production etc... it also reduces the available O2 in the water. Trouble is fish need more O2 at higher temps and this then causes a stress issue. Add in that if there are any pathogens then they too will most likely proliferate at an accelerated rate too. Aim for 82 to a max o 84f.

I'm guessing that none of the discus were quarantined before they were added to the main tank (and the reseller quarantining them doesn't count here). Sometimes we can be lucky and get no issues, others we can get caught out.

Live bloodworms can and do act as a pathogen vector, but almost always they affect the internals of the fish. It is also worth pointing out that snails can also carry pathogens and these are hard to quarantine too.

Generally it is better to avoid feeding any freshwater live food to freshwater fish. If you must feed live food then feed live brine shrimp or white worms. As for the pathogens being hard to get rid of from the tank, no not really but they may cause some fatalities in your fish. The trick is identifying what we are dealing with.

As for the initial cause, well poor maintenance is the first suspect, this will have lead to the high phosphates so in that respect the lfs guy was right. His solution was wrong though, using rowaphos and such is just a waste of money, water changes are the way forward. As for the fluorite causing the issue - no it didn't, at least not of itself. Having any substrate can make maintenance harder, anything that makes maintenance harder may impact water quality. Flourite is just clay. I suspect the seller may just be trying to deflect you away from suspecting poor quality stock, but that may just be me being cynical.

As for the amount of water to change, well discus really do need clean water, so plenty is the short answer. It is not uncommon to change 50% daily, some do more.

[Rachael702]

Hi Paul!
Thanks for replying and thanks for explaining. Good info on the CO2 and water temp.
Is there a way to make water changes easier?? esp filling and hauling (3) 5 gallon jugs of RO water from the grocery store- even once a week seems like a lot to me. lol. maybe a link on a how to if you know one. So sad to say doing that every day just won't happen for me. And will prob be my deciding factor on continuing the discus journey or not. I didn't realize water changes were to be that intensive. One thing is for sure if I do switch to an easier breed, water changes will feel like a BREEZE! haha.

No quarantine. I assumed coming right from a breeder, and being in direct contact with him through phone and email, being walked through an acclimation process, they would already be safe. Guess not. Will always quarantine in the future. What is the time frame necessary?

Will switch to frozen blood worms. "Black worms" are advertised on your site... do you endorse their parasite-free claim? I love watching the discus chase after them, and my BGK goes crazy for them.

Thanks for commenting on the phosphates. I am surprised that the API Master kit doesn't include that, if it does affect fish. Which I've read everywhere it does not. Do you disagree? Where does it accumulate from if it's not a part of the nitrogen cycle? LFS guy suggested lotion on the hands- a possibility as I wasn't perfectly diligent at washing my hands every time- yet I tested tap water that had lotion hands rinsed into it- with no register of phosphates. LFS guy said it could be air freshener, glade plug-ins etc. I removed several from my house and now only burn candles. I ended up testing water samples exposed to different things till I was blue in the face looking for the source so I could remove it.) Finally tested tap water treated with a ph buffer- I forget the brand, but that alone sent the reading for phosphates through the roof. I'll ditch the ROWA (still in my filter) and just go to town on some water changes, to the best of my ability. Haven't retested for phosphates, but I will.
Also, I'm hearing the emphasis on lots of water changes, how do I determine how much is enough for my tank, since the readings of the API test dont seem to be a good indicator? Perhaps its not about the API kit readings, but more like those with experience know once a week 50% won't keep discus healthy, as I seem to be discovering.

Addressing a game plan to get everything back on track... if I do decide to remove the substrate and put everyone in the main tank, do you think this will benefit the fish, or stress them out from so much messing around? How would I best go about this? I'm thinking put everyone in the 20 gallon quarantine while I take out the plants and substrate. Use 20% tank water for an 80% water change, then return everyone to the big tank?

Then there is still the question of "what are we dealing with exactly?" I'm gathering the first step is up the water changes as much as possible, and see if that restores health first?

Lots of questions. I guess I'll be changing water while I wait for a reply from you or another helpful member.

[pcsb23]

Buying RO water is sort of counter productive. It's fine if you only do it once a week, but every day it will get tiresome in a heartbeat. Get an RO machine and use that, it will save time, energy and money in the long run. I believe a company called Buckeye supplies (or similar) is the place to get these from in the USA.

Of course you need to make the call if discs are right for you, they do require more than average maintenance. You could try just using ordinary tap water, dechlorinated with prime or similar, for a few weeks and see if that helps. Even with the relatively high nitrates, if the water is changed daily it may prove to be ok. I'm always trying to get folk to not be too obsessed with numbers. The key thing is that the water needs to be clean.

Dealing with the phosphate question, I think you may need to find a new lfs, hand lotion and air fresheners? What has he been taking? (I want some ) - phosphates mainly come from the tap water and the fishes food.

If you do decide to go BB (the tank, not you) then yes, better to remove the fish, drain the tank, remove the substrate. Make sure though that the bottom of the tank is covered, either by painting the outside or putting some card or other covering material tight up against the glass also on the outside. Don't worry about re-using any tank water, just fill with clean water.