Giving Up on the Hobby?

[RobC]

I just got back from a business trip (3 days) and came back home to a batch of dead discus, others are not active, just sitting on the floor of the tank. Before I left made sure things were good and did my mass water change. I did my checks, water changes, proper feeding, am I just fated not to enjoy this hobby? Has anyone else gone through this situation, just have discus unexpectedly die? Do everything to the T, and still fail at it!?! How did you recover, if at all? All the effort, time and money down the drain.

[brewmaster15]

I just got back from a business trip (3 days) and came back home to a batch of dead discus, others are not active, just sitting on the floor of the tank. Before I left made sure things were good and did my mass water change. I did my checks, water changes, proper feeding, am I just fated not to enjoy this hobby? Has anyone else gone through this situation, just have discus unexpectedly die? Do everything to the T, and still fail at it!?! How did you recover, if at all? All the effort, time and money down the drain.

Rob,
Unfortunately it happens.. I have gone that route many times. I once specifically move my 4 favorite discus to a separate tank before going away for a week instead of leaving them in the 125 gal. Came back , and all the fish in every other tank I had were fine. My 4 favorites were dead. I pinched the airlines to their sponge filters with the glass Lid. It happens. I am sure others here have gone thru it. Best you can do is try and figure what happened and move on. Its the down side of the hobby.

I see this is your first post, wish it was under better circumstances! Welcome to SimplyDiscus!


Al

[DatDiscusDude]

Rob ... One Word... BRUTAL!

This hobby can be so very brutal... I feel it is actually part of the reason why we love it so much. The swings, the highs, the lows... When things are bad they are F'N bad and when they are good, the high is well... HIGH!

Care to tell us more about your fish? Your tank? Their size? What did you do prior to leaving?

I have been in your shoes many a times. It seems so simple to just end it. As you said, the effort and time it takes to maintain a good tank feels like a waste when this happens. As the poster above said. I left for a short weekend get away. The power to my then Apt. went out, when it went back on the cannister that I had at the time must have lost its siphon and my house reeked and I had a brown tank of flaoting carcass. Enough to make you vomit and never want to look at an aquarium again...

Hang in there. Read, learn, post, and let the people here help figure out what went wrong and how to correct it.

At the end of the day, we are dealing with living animals. Sometimes you can try to kill them and they don't die, other times you do everything perfect and... they drop dead. No rhyme or reason to the maddness...

Glad you came to a place like this to vent and seek some guidance before exiting the hobby.

How many fish are left? Did you do a big WC? lets try and save them and get you right again!

[sanjay21]

@Rob: sorry to hear that ! I know exactly how that feels !

I recently purchased new discus from a guy in California, I quarantined them 2 weeks before adding some of them to my baby grow out tank which has 12 babies about 2.5 - 3.0" in size and couple big guys in my 75 and rest is a disaster ...

I lost 11 babies and 2 adults from my 75 other 3 adults still are down but been fighting over 10 days now. I lost some of favorite fishes. It hurts ! I got the thought of moving out, but yeah give it some time and you will slowly get back but more stronger in being cautious.

- All the new ones are safe (seems to carry some deadly disease)

[RobC]

Rob,
Unfortunately it happens.. I have gone that route many times. I once specifically move my 4 favorite discus to a separate tank before going away for a week instead of leaving them in the 125 gal. Came back , and all the fish in every other tank I had were fine. My 4 favorites were dead. I pinched the airlines to their sponge filters with the glass Lid. It happens. I am sure others here have gone thru it. Best you can do is try and figure what happened and move on. Its the down side of the hobby.

I see this is your first post, wish it was under better circumstances! Welcome to SimplyDiscus!


Al

Thanks, glad to be on the forum, I found my dead pleco with half a body, maybe the cause, I have no idea what happened, everything in the tank was alive before I left.

[jmf3460]

one possible culprit. The pleco died (from natural causes) and caused a giant ammonia spike in the tank??? how big was the pleco?

[RobC]

Rob ... One Word... BRUTAL!

This hobby can be so very brutal... I feel it is actually part of the reason why we love it so much. The swings, the highs, the lows... When things are bad they are F'N bad and when they are good, the high is well... HIGH!

Care to tell us more about your fish? Your tank? Their size? What did you do prior to leaving?

I have been in your shoes many a times. It seems so simple to just end it. As you said, the effort and time it takes to maintain a good tank feels like a waste when this happens. As the poster above said. I left for a short weekend get away. The power to my then Apt. went out, when it went back on the cannister that I had at the time must have lost its siphon and my house reeked and I had a brown tank of flaoting carcass. Enough to make you vomit and never want to look at an aquarium again...

Hang in there. Read, learn, post, and let the people here help figure out what went wrong and how to correct it.

At the end of the day, we are dealing with living animals. Sometimes you can try to kill them and they don't die, other times you do everything perfect and... they drop dead. No rhyme or reason to the maddness...

Glad you came to a place like this to vent and seek some guidance before exiting the hobby.

How many fish are left? Did you do a big WC? lets try and save them and get you right again!

Thanks, I think its caused by a dead pleco, I did a 80% water change, I lost 5, and have 6 left, added Seachem safe for water conditioner, Epsom salt to relieve the stress and Melafix Antibac to fight against any potential bad bacteria.

Waited a couple hours, soaked a little granules with Seachem Garlic guard to get their appetites back, got them back eating as normal but still see them scraping against the floor of the tank, will do another water change in the evening.

[RobC]

Pleco is probably less than 5 inches.

[jmf3460]

how big is the tank? how many discus were there before they died?

[DISCUS STU]

how big is the tank? how many discus were there before they died?

This is the right question and also what type of filtration are you using. I had die offs and a vacation die off but it was due to my own negligence (laziness) in relying on an external power filter to be the only source aeration and not using air stones as well. When the power cut out temporarily during the summer the filter didn't come back and all my Discus suffocated. The ONLY things that did survive were the plecos and catfish. This was a 90 gal. with about 11-12 fully grown Discus. The smell when I came back four days later was horrendous.

Are you only using sponge filters and are need to rely on very large daily water changes? In my setup one dead pleco wouldn't have a domino effect resulting in everything else dieing.

[RobC]

This is the right question and also what type of filtration are you using. I had die offs and a vacation die off but it was due to my own negligence (laziness) in relying on an external power filter to be the only source aeration and not using air stones as well. When the power cut out temporarily during the summer the filter didn't come back and all my Discus suffocated. The ONLY things that did survive were the plecos and catfish. This was a 90 gal. with about 11-12 fully grown Discus. The smell when I came back four days later was horrendous.

Are you only using sponge filters and are need to rely on very large daily water changes? In my setup one dead pleco wouldn't have a domino effect resulting in everything else dieing.

I have a 20 gallon sump, 100 gallon tank, with 11 discus 4 - 5 inches, 3 angels couple of inches each, and 1 pleco.

[brewmaster15]

Rob,
Im wondering if the problem was related to what you did before the trip. One dead pleco that size in that tank in 3 days should not have caused this. Can you tell us everything you did to the tank before the trip?
Al

[RobC]

Rob,
Im wondering if the problem was related to what you did before the trip. One dead pleco that size in that tank in 3 days should not have caused this. Can you tell us everything you did to the tank before the trip?
Al

After sitting on it for a while, I think it maybe caused by overfeeding, I feed them granules, I usually feed these guys 2 times a day (before/after) work. Anticipating that I'll be gone, and flying out on a Sunday evening, I made it 3, and a couple hours before my flight I did a 50% water change. I don't exactly remember, but I'm going to guess the 3 times fed were in larger portions. That is my only possible guess, or a power outage happened that I'm not aware of.

UPDATE: As for the rest that I have left, I did 3 - 20% water changes yesterday and one more this morning (not sure doing this so many time is the right approach with Discuses, but it made me sleep better at night). They were skittish most of the day yesterday, I left the light on for most of the night, I've read opposite on the forum saying to leave the lights off, but from my experience with other fishes, leaving the lights on for a night relieves their skittish-ness. This morning when they saw me, instead of hiding in the corner they swam towards me, I put some (very little) food in but its been test and spit. I'll soak the food in Seachem garlic guard, they seem to react well with this but I prefer that they eat organically.

Thanks for the support.

[Filip]

Hang in there Rob . It has happened to all of us at some point of fish keeping , sooner AND later too .
You still got 6 discus alive to take care for , so try to look at the bright side of this little disaster .

Try to find out why this happend and try to learn and grow from it rather than thinking that luck has something to do with .

Welcome to Simply discus and good luck with the rest of your 6 discus Rob.

[DISCUS STU]

Also, hang in there. I'm not sure if it's been asked and answered but what type of water changes are you doing? Aged water, straight from the tap, etc.