Discus using one gill? Real solution?

[alcastro]

. Matt I am a auto tech I cannot guess need to diagnose it first, but there are times that I know what's wrong from a block away, no real cure for flukes I take it but again that's problably not your problem, maybe the water from your new filters may help.

[MadMatt]

Thanks for being direct Al, I was once a branch 1 collision tech. myself for many years. Since then I have moved on and developed products, worked in labs, etc.
I know a few thing about diagnosis and isolating factors.
To my understanding of a fluke infestation, once it starts to roll is basically the kiss of death.
So we will leave at that, nothing we can do.
That's all I needed to know.

Today is a good day, a day of changes.
Since there is nothing a hobbiest can do I have several beautiful Discus to cull, some I love but in life nothing is forever, not even us, so with everyday we need to embrass the moment.

Thanks guys and thanks Al for being direct.

. Matt I am a auto tech I cannot guess need to diagnose it first, but there are times that I know what's wrong from a block away, no real cure for flukes I take it but again that's problably not your problem, maybe the water from your new filters may help.

[strawberryblonde]

Hi Matt,

It sounds like you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater today and for the life of me I can't figure out why you'd do that, but there ya go.

I took the time to read some of your older threads from June and noticed that you've had myriad problems right from the get go. From what I've read you've treated these guys with food that you medicated yourself (didn't reply to the guy who asked what meds you were putting in the food), treated them with a Clout type med, treated them with General Cure and treated repeatedly (daily is what you said) with PP.

On top of all the meds, you had a problem with some type of worms in all of the breeding tanks due to your sponge filters that came from other tanks. And then there's some sort of copepod problem in your display tank.

The whole thing sounds like it's a snowball effect. Discus are incredibly healthy if you purchase from a reputable breeder and they have great immune systems, but, as happens with so many of us when we're new to the hobby, missteps in their care can lead to issues and those issues eventually take their toll on the immune systems of the discus.

Once that happens, it's snowball time. You try to cure one thing only to have a secondary problem crop up. Treat that and the next one rears it's ugly head. And so on and so forth. I've been there. Something as simple as using the wrong cleaning brush in my main tank led to a virus and from there everything snowballed into disaster. Month after month I fought it and lost.

Looking back on it, the smart thing for me to do would have been to go barebottom with my tank and to just keep doing 90% daily water changes and then remove any discus that didn't make it. Instead I started the whole "must QT, medicate and help these guys" routine. It didn't help them and in most cases only made them worse because an immune compromised fish can't often can't handle the meds. Don't forget, most of these meds are one form or another of poison. Yeah, we give the poisons in very small doses intended to only kill the parasite, mold or fungus and not large enough of a dose to kill the fish itself. But for a seriously sick discus those poisons build up.

I have no idea what else you've used for meds that might have serious effects on gill membranes, but I know for sure that PP does. It eats organic materials. Gills membranes are organic material. So there's a very good possibility that your discus who are breathing with only one gill have some degree of damaged membranes due to the PP treatments. And as I've said, any other meds that you used that can burn the membranes will have affected them too.

So we've established that they already have compromised immune systems due to the continued stress and meds since June. And possibly gill damage due to PP and other meds.

Killing them might seem like the best option, but for me, so long as they are continuing to eat, I'd simply fill up a 55 gallon tank (or 2 of them if you have more than 6 discus with this gill problem) and put them into it.

And then just change up their diet to include high quality discus flakes (Ken's has some great flakes for discus!), FDBW's and possibly some discus pellets if they'll eat them. Big daily water changes of course, but then just let nature take its course. Either they'll heal, or they'll die, but either way they'll be in their own tank and not infecting every other discus you have.

Oh and just FYI, a discus can live a good long life with only one functioning gill. I had one for 5 years who suffered an injury to his right gill. He only used the left one after that and it never bothered him at all.

[nc0gnet0]

Here we go again!
"Riddles, buy fish from reliable sources and don't get it in the first place."
Exhausting.
Why can't we communicate direct with one another???
Like this:
If you have one gill closed it could be:
Issue 1.
Issue 2.
Issue 3.
Issue 4.
Etc.
Etc.
This is how u solve issue:
Solution 1.
Solution 2.
Solution 3.
Solution 4.
Solution etc. Etc.

This is how progress is made.
However,I don't have a scope, even if I did I wouldn't be able to properly identify the entity. My city has no trained vets in aquaitc.

You know u get to a point where so much challenge is incurred with no end in sight and the reward is not out weighing the challenge.
Might be time to pick another endeavour.

194 views this thread so far....remember that number.....194

So, lets say I complete your "list"..........

I give you 4-5 possible causes and in then give you a different medication for each possible cause.

What happens next?

You, and a dozen or so people reading this thread start with the first cause, treat, then move on to the second, treat, so on on so on.

And when its all over the poor fish will have ben subjected to 4 different medications and the owner will sit there dumbfounded as to why their discus is still not healthy.

A wise albeit short cross dresser once said, medication kills many more fish than it cures. I am starting to see that manifest itself on this forum over and over again. It's why I don't post much in this section anymore. Treat first, ask questions later. White poo? toss in 500 mg metro. Fish flash? Dump in some prazi or Trichlorfon. Next month that same user will "discover" another issue, and low and behold, here we go again with the same poor discus and more meds. You people know who you are. Stop, and Stop now!

And while you might see me as being a smart ***, bear in mind I am not just addressing you, but rather the 100 or so other people that are watching, or will search "gill flukes" in the future. This is why so many of the old timers cannot stress enough some of the basic key elements to keeping discus successfully. Buy from a trusted source. Always QT. Have a hospital tank. Provide good food and plenty of clean water. Prevention, not medication is the key to success.

There is no sure fire way to diagnose fish as having flukes other than to identify them under a scope, trying to do it several hundred miles away is impossible. But, I bet my paycheck that if I were to say "get a scope, and if you find flukes, treat with medication x" you and 20-30 other users on this forum will say scope be dammed, and just go out and get medication x and begin treatment. Many will do so without a proper hospital tank, some will over dose, some will stop treatment midway through because they don't see results in two-three days, etc etc.

Learning how to use a scope is quite easy with a little practice. If you are serious about your fish, I strongly suggest you get one.

In the interim, I suggest learning how to do a salt dip (not a bath). After the fish has been dipped, return the fish to a sterile hospital tank (not the one from which the fish came). Do this every second day for three treatments. See if there is any improvement. Each time you do a dip, return it to a different tank that has been sterilized and filled with clean fresh water. Failing to do this will leave the fish defenseless against any nasties that are in the tank from which it came.

[rickztahone]

Both Toni and Rick have offered some great advice and also a great example of why getting quality fish (not just discus) is so important. I can't add anything to what either member has posted, so I will simply say good luck.

[Driftwood Mike]

Extremely well said. There is more truth in that answer than I have read in along time! Bravo!

[MadMatt]

Every once in a while, someone or a few people say something that really hits home and humbles a person for the better.
Toni you are right, best to let nature take its course.
And Rick, you hit another home run, I tell you.... You really smashed it out of the ball park.
Basically stop being OCD and keep good house keeping and really make sure the fish is ill before smashing it in with something that 90% of the time wouldn't relinquish desired results anyways.
So if water changes don't fix it, change more water anyways and really make sure it isn't fixing it, then change more water, and only after that salt dip with the regiment recommended, and after all that properly diagnose fish.... Only then use meds or something else.
Thanks Rick and Toni, presented like true masters at your craft.
You guys just blew me away.
I probably take the health a little to serious, I see the sick pictures people post on here, and I only ever had one of my fish that sick and it was during a QT process and never made it to any of my tanks. And that one long ago I basically poisoned its entire life.

Thanks guys.
Now back to changing more water!

[alcastro]

You where just being Mad Matt the Mad part, now you are Matt, is this a great Forum or what.

[israelillo81]

Excellent advise you guys gave. Im going to get myself a microscope

[MadMatt]

I think my female has some type of huge anchor worms.
Please advize

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...ms!&highlight=

[Boyd Luth]

Just used my search engine, as one of my Discus has an injured Gill, has not eaten, and looks :-(....I have had him separated in a 29 gal. Hospital tank. I so enjoy reading, and especially this particular thread. Thank you Toni, and Al. I may lose this Discus ? May just try the ol fashioned, raise temp, and aquarium salt, maybe he will go peaceably. He is bought through someone, whom they get their Discus from Hans. However, they have gone out of business, live and learn. Toni has helped me before, she will remind you of silly stuff you posted before, lol. And she was correct 100%.

[Alight]

OK, so first it may not be gill flukes causing this. I have scoped fish that had the one gill thing, and also scoped fish when I had a die off going on and found no gill flukes, but had treatment with prazi stop the die off. I have seen a large bacterial growth in some of these fish, instead of any parasites. I have lots of experience with microscopy (many scientific journal publications on this) so don't think I missed anything.

I have seen this condition stopped by praziquantel,and by metronidazole, and even by Minocycline and erythromycin.

However, the best thing that I have found that seems to "cure" the "gill fluke" problem (mostly I never found any flukes in these fish) is flubendazole. This combined with bleach-sterilizing a tank can pretty much permanently solve the problem. The problem is that unless you totally sterilize your house (all containers, floors, all equipment, kill all existing fish and some how actually find some fish that do not have the bacteria, protozoan, or parasite that causes this problem) you will likely see it again some day, albeit many years later.

You want the truth on this and the truth is you will have to be vigilant for this always, and nip it in the bud whenever you see 1) discus that are off their feed a bit 2) discus that dart around the tank and startle easily 3) Discus with very poor fertility after they had been very fertile to begin with 3) a die off of discus fry, juvies, or more than one unexplained die off of adults. The flub treatment will even work for very sick fish that have wasted away, particularly if you combine it with erythromycin. It also works for you fry, old fry, Juvies and adults. You will occasionally get some tail standers with this treatment and you should immediately remove these fish to another tank and treat them with a much lower dose of the flub in the future, but it will work even for these. I know, I know, use of treatments without a "known target" can lead to resistance of the parasite/bacteria/protzoan. Heck look at our agricultural use of antibiotics for the worst example of this, but I sincerely doubt that hobbyist use of Flub is going to cause this problem. Commercial breeder use might, and may be responsible for the loss of prazi and metro treatment effectiveness on these conditions. I wonder how many commercial breeders will tell us the truth about the antibiotics they use? I'm guessing none.

Somewhere, it would be great to have a sticky on this posted. May be one that is listed as "an alternative to killing all of your fish and starting over"? It is just not right to have everyone say "start with healthy fish". I am pretty sure this will not work, and from my own experience, if your house has ever had the "gill" fluke problem, getting your fish from the Simply sponsors that say they will give you disease free fish will not work, even if you have bleached the hell out of your tanks and house. The "Gill Fluke problem" (most likely not gill flukes) will still return someday. Maybe it will work for someone who has never had discus, who knows, but they will cause their own problems since they will be newbies.

So my recommendations are:
1) Get the healthiest discus 2 inchers you can.
2)Feed them well on John's beefheart recipe (over feed many times a day as John does and siphon off the crud)
3) do water changes to keep your nitrates below 10 ppm at all times and lower if possible (nitrates are only a marker, don't think you only have to manage nitrates).
4) If more than one of your baby fish dies, and it smells very bad and is dark and motly, or just dies for no reason treat the whole tank with flubendazole for 5days. If fish in the tank look sick (dark, not eating well, thin, not growing well) do this treatment for sure for 5 days. You can treat again a week later, but my experience is that the 5 day treatment will solve your problem for a long time or maybe forever, and doing the treatment the second time does not help any.

OK, got this off my chest, and back to very rarely posting on Simply Discus

[Alight]

Wanted to add to the previous post but could not. More suggestions here:
5. Flubendazole is NOT Fenbendazole. Trying to use Fen as a bath will kill your fish. Flub will not.
6. Also had luck with Delos and levamisole. There was a post here, I think last year or the year before on a way to eliminate gill flukes forever. This included both levamisole and Delos. I tried this and it seemed to work for about 6 months. Then what ever it was came back and a second treatment did not work.
7. Discus Hans suggests that growing out discus in groups of 8 or more helps prevent runts from forming and being picked on. I tried this with 16 Discus, and it really did work. Even if this means being a bit more crowded and having to change water more often, I recommend it. This creates the catch 22 that discus need to be crowded, but crowded means better chances of disease that hits even more fish.
8.Sources for the drugs mentioned here can be found on other threads.
9. I really did try the get rid of all fish, sterilize everything and got my fish from one of the most reputable sponsors on Simply Discus, and still had the "Gill Fluke" problem after about 6 months. Really neuced everything with industrial bleach.
10. If you want to grow out and/or breed discus, bare bottom tank is the only way to go.
11. planted discus tanks take many hours a day to keep nice, because plants grow so quickly, and need to be trimmed and algae needs to be removed, ect.
12. plants will not grow well in a well maintained discus tank because nitrates and phosphates will be too low.
13. A crowded discus tank means lots of algae because algae like rapid increases in nitrates.

[alexh]

i just had this problem with my fish. What i did to cure them is first make a 50% water change and wait for one day. If nothing get better then second is use sea salt 1 tablespoon for 10 gallon, temp 32 Celsius and keep for a week. After a week make a 50% water change. But you will see at second day the fish will be better. Still keep the for a week to make sure to kill the bacteria.

[Davidzil]

Read this post, don't even know if it was a smart idea, lol
Love this forum, for real.
As stated real solutions are not even given in real medicine, there are a lot of possibles if you are not 100% sure what the problem is.
So that is why most of the mods/Sr. members advise on starting out with recommended stock, knowing the chances are higher towards a positive outcome.
So why not take the first step that makes more sense.
If you do go in a different directions, there might be a higher change of a negative outcome.
Simple.
No one has all the answers, it is all based on previous experiences.
If only fish could talk.