Project Log - Discus Take 1

[kris2341]

This is my first attempt at discus, it involved obtaining 10 turquoise discus from a California importer that got discus from Vietnam.

The fish looked good, were cheap, and grew nicely when I had them, but it turns out, they had very weak systems and quite a few died suddenly.

Out of 10, 4 remained.

From my experience and after digging through breeding logs here on Simply, it turns out these fish have been treated extremely roughly in transport from Vietnam and may have been dosed with hormones due to their relatively small size yet fully formed color patterns on the body that don't usually form until they get much bigger. It turns out one of the 10 Turquoise discus had FULL adult coloration but died shortly after. All these fish were 3" discus, but they did grow nicely while they were healthy.

System summary up until I had problems with the discus:

• 60 gallon Acrylic tank bare bottom
• Eheim Jager 200w heater set to 86F
• Rena Filstar XP3 loaded with filter foam and Seachem Pond Matrix

Maintenance regiment:

• Tap water @ 90F treated with Seachem Safe and aged for 2 hours in a brute trash can and air stone, water placed into aquarium once it has cooled to 86F
• daily 70% water changes, just barely enough for them to swim around comfortably
• daily vacuuming of the bare bottom tank
• 2x weekly cleaning of canister filter pads

Once I started having problems, I first suspected it as some kind of flagellate problem as bloat is common with discus and these were very stressed fish. Discus were going dark, not eating and died within 2-3 days:

• Tank temperature was first raised to 90F
• Tank was treated with Metronidazole at a rate of 6x 500mg tablets to the 60 gallons per day to no effect after a week
• Suspected bacterial problem due to discus eyes becoming cloudy upon their health declining, tank treated with Cephalexin tablets at a recommended dose daily to no effect.
• Discus kept dying, suspected parasitic epidemic with bacterial infection being a secondary symptom, treated with Prazipro for a week to no effect
• I upgraded the canister to a Aquatop CF500 canister since it was something I had access to and installed a Jebao 55w UV sterilizer on the tank with a brand new bulb from American Aquarium Products. This stopped whatever was going on with my tank and the fish are healthy even after having shut off the UV completely after a week.

A week after things became ok, I lowered the temperature back to 82F and that is the temperature I now maintain all my systems. The UV has been shut off and the discus, though extremely skittish, seem healthy and are being raised on a steady diet of cobalt flakes.

Despite my eventual success with these final 4 fish, and to this day, they seem more or less healthy, they have been deemed a potential biohazard by Simply Discus regulars and I was recommended to dispose of them as anything they carry could kill any new fish I would want to get. Not willing to take the life of my fish, I simply declared this project a failure and those fish will simply be isolated from the rest in their own system and unless they somehow prove successful in growth and long term health, I will not consider mixing them with my future fish. The water is changed 2x in a week to save me time for my other fish as there is little drive to keep them in top condition anymore.



Discus Take 1 - Failure


Potential Plans for the Future:

1. The system will be cleared of fish and bleached
2. The fish will be put into a bottom tank on my fish rack as to limit contamination on the upper tanks where they will spend the foreseeable future.
3. The current holding tank will be turned into a display tank.
4. The tank will have Mopani driftwood and Amazon swords, the bottom will be a playsand bottom.
5. The Filstar XP3 and Jebao 55w UV sterilizer will be used as main system filtration.
6. Plan to include a Purigen reactor in the above filtration system
7. System is planned to stock a school of cardinal tetras.

Side Note: The 4 discus kept in this tank MAY return to this tank given that they are pathogenically compatible with the Cardinal tetras, this will be tested by mixing a small number of tetras with the discus in their rack tank for no less than 6 weeks as recommended

Update: Yesterday night (10/18/2014) one of the 4 discus confirmed dead.

Yesterday afternoon, a loud BOOM was heard from the 60 gallon holding tank, upon looking inside, all the water was moving and one of the discus was acting erratically. They all seemed healthy, but these discus are so skittish that I always assumed they would die in such manners, how lame. No one was in the living room to startle them yet I suppose they startled themselves. That night, the discus turned up dead.

[rickztahone]

82F is an ideal temp for discus. 86F may be too hot

[kris2341]

The discus trio has been moved to the bottom tank. Here is where they will remain for the rest of their days.

I truly hope these 3 will surprise me one of these days, while they may be somewhat stunted now after all those meds in the beginning, and then turning down their water changes for awhile to get things ready for the 2nd batch, they will now receive the same exact treatment as the 2nd batch.

They should still be quite young despite what seemed to be a hormone treatment to bring out their colors, only brought in late july to august i believe. Assuming they do not get sick again, perhaps they will grow into nice individuals in time!




For now, both sets of discus will have their own maintenance tools in order to keep things clean, when the 2nd group gets bigger, I will probably introduce the runt to them and see if they do well together. If they are doing well, I will probably mix my discus.