Sick discus

[Saguaro]

Hello

Please help me cure my fish or at least help me relieve pain.

Problem

1. Please explain the problems with your fish. When did you notice the problems and did anything unusual happen that you think started them?
First 2 of my discus stopped eating and got dark, I treated with esha hexamita, prazi and crushed metro tablets(hexamita and metro because a lot of my fish have a few (3-5) small holes around its mouth). One pulled trough but the other one died, but the hexamita treatment did nothing because they all still have the holes around their mouth. In time the survivor developed a weird condition on his tail where it looked like one of his blood vessels started receiving a whole lot of blood and formed a clot or maybe it was some sort of parasitic worm, but it looked like it was on the inside of his tail, that part of his tail later fell of and the tail grew back to normal. As a precaution in started feeding homemade recipe with metro to stop any further problem in my other discus,and try to fix the holes around their mouths but it did not work. In time, he then developed a dent in his body, started gasping on the surface and almost completely stopped eating. I treated with epsolm salt and later put him in a quarantine tank and treated with prazi. That did not help so i put him in my main system and threated with esha 2000 and exit. While in quarantine he completely stopped eating-even white worms, and developed pop eye. Today i added a bit of Epsom salt to help heal his wounds.


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).
Turning dark, a few holes in head/mouth, not eating, headstanding/gasping on the surface, a bit of scratching against the heater, white thing on tail, cloudy eyes, pop eyes


3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.
Esha hexamita, esha gdex-prazi, crushed metro tablets, this helped with turning dark and not eating at first. Now I treated with prazi, metro in food, Epsom salt, esha 2000 and exit. All standard dosages and durations


Tank/Water

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.

3x50gal tank with 1 50gal sump. 10 discus, mostly young adults


5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).

drip system. 25-75gal per day

6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?

1 year, bare bottom, around 3 cleanings per day

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.

No aging, no ph swing

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.


- temp 86 degrees Fahrenheit

- ph around 8

- ammonia reading low to none

- nitrite reading low to none

- nitrate reading low to none

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 100%

- RO water ____


9. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.

No.

10. Please tell us what you feed your fish and how often. This can be critical information for solving the problem so be as specific as you can.

home made recipe, white worms, daphnia magna in the summer, tropical discus gran. I feed a lot, at least 6 times per day but only so much that they eat everything in a few minutes.

11. 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.

https://imgur.com/gallery/WkuTX Pictures with descriptions.

I would appreciate any help in treating my fish or at least relieving my big guys pain. He looks in bad shape but i haven't given up on him yet, hes still tries to swim a bit and greet me when he sees me. As for the cause of the problem i think it might be a parasite introduced with the live food. I know everybody always says its the water, do water changes, but i have never had problems with water, it comes directly form a mountain spring and is perfect for discus except for the high ph, plus i did massive water changes for a long time and it did not help. Plus the problems have been going on for a few months time, and during that only 2 of the discus got sick and the other ones have just started to show some white spots on their fins, and while this was going on i 2 pair constantly breeding and females trying to lay eggs so bad water doesn't really fit. Like i said before, my mail suspect is a parasite introduced with the live food, it might also explain why i was unable to fix the holes in the head/mouth/hexamita. AS for the live food, it was bought from a guy who breeds it especially for fish food and should have been clean, however i still think that's the likely culprit.

[Leandrahwarren]

I have no clue what this could be, but i think you might want to post your actual Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate readings.

[Saguaro]

Neither do i, that's why i asked here. So the big one did not make it, he died overnight. I have stopped/finished all treatment because the white dots have not disappeared and the discus all stopped eating as much and are more skittish. I have tested my water and its all 0, except ammonia that's 0-25, by the color i would say its about 10, so not perfect but nowhere near enough to cause such problems. And that's after treatment during which i stopped my water changes, so my normal levels are even better

[geo57]

Ammonia should be zero Sag as should nitrites, Nitrates you can have a little of but that's it. I'd get them lots of good clean water for the next several days and up your temp a bit. Good luck.

[Saguaro]

Thanks for the good wishes but like i said it's not the water. Currently i'm looking at Anchor Worm, Argulus, calcium deposits, Lymphocystis, Columnaris and other similar things. But it's hard to select the right one so any help from someone who has experience with diseases like that would be greatly appreciated