New Discus Tank! And 2 of them seem to be sick !

[Universev]

Hey everyone! I'm not sure if my discus are sick!
I got them 10 days ago. And few of them "seem" to be sick.
- I tested the water with master test kid and the resultsis 0 amonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate.
- I do water change daily ab 25%
- Since I just got them I used Seachem Paraguard once a day as direction on the bottle to make sure my fished are in good condition
- I also have 15 cardinals in the water and they seem to do pretty good
- I also have plants in my aquarium and they are doing pretty well and it grow alot
- I also dosing Seachem Stressguard at the same time as Seachem Paraguard (in window of 1h or so) cuz some fishes got its fin damaged while transporting.
- I feed them 3 times a day (flakes & palette daily and bloodworm 3 times a week)
- They eat pretty well and seem to be hungry all the times. Except one who seem to be sick and it always hide at the corner.
- The PH of my aquarium water is stable at 7.3 and the pH of the store wherewI bought my fishes is 7.4
- the temperature is 29c and 60 gallons aquarium
- I will move my fishes to 120 gallons in a few months


I'm not sure if the water flow is too strong and make my fishes stress...

Anyone can tell me what to do please !

Thank you so much!

[Paul Sabucchi]

Hi, welcome to Simply Discus.
In order for the folk on the forum to give you their pissible advice it would be best if you coud fill the questionnaire with as many details as possible, you can find it here,
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...lease-complete
Copy it and paste it on your thread and give us info.
If you feel l8je it you can tell us a bit more about yourself and your fishkeeping in general in the welcoe section. Again a warm welcome

[Universev]

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?
- It started 5 or 6 days ago. One of the fish doesn't swim much and always stay in the corner. He is also chased by other discus sometime. So 2 days ago I decide to remove all my gravels and plants and put them in a small pots instead ( Now bb aquarium).

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).
- My discus seems to hurt his pectoral fins but its doesn't look damaged at all. But most of the time his pectoral fins doesn't move and always stay in the corner. But most of the time his pectoral fins doesn't move. Their color got darker. The sick one doesn't eat a lot or almost didn't eat and he always hiding.


3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.
I used daily Seachem StressGuard and Seachem ParaGuard as direction on bottle 5ml/10g


Tank/Water

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
- 60g cycled tank, 10 discus 2.5''-3'' and I plan to move them to 120 gallons in next few months. 15 cardinal tetra 1''-1.5'' and 10 corydoras 1''-1.5''

5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).
- Once a day about 25 %

6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
- About 7 weeks

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.
- no

8. Parameters and water source;
- Tap water, PH stable at 7.3-7.4

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 = 29c

- ph = 7.3-7.4

- ammonia reading = 0

- nitrite reading =0

- nitrate reading =0

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 = 0

- municipal water 100%

- RO water = 0


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

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.
- Tetramin Flake (2 or 3 times a day)
- Hikari Discus Bio-Gold Granules ( once a day)
- Frozen Bloodworm (3 times a week)


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.

[Universev]

Hi, welcome to Simply Discus.
In order for the folk on the forum to give you their pissible advice it would be best if you coud fill the questionnaire with as many details as possible, you can find it here,
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...lease-complete
Copy it and paste it on your thread and give us info.
If you feel l8je it you can tell us a bit more about yourself and your fishkeeping in general in the welcoe section. Again a warm welcome

THank you for your concern. Here is my fishes questionnaire!

[LizStreithorst]

Two things stand out to me. Judging by the parameters doesn't sound like your tank is properly cycled for the bio load. Also, it is very important to know whether or not your water has a pH swing. You didn't say if you use a declorinator. Do you?

[danotaylor]

0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and 0 nitrates is not good on a 7 week old cycle. Have you had ammonia or nitrite at all? Those numbers indicate your test kit is not working properly or that your filter is not cycled properly.
Did you quarantine your discus b4 adding them in with the cardinals?
Others will chime in who have more discus experience than me, but in the meantime increase your WC's to as much as you can handle (75%+/day) and add 1 tbsp of salt per 10 gallons with each change.

[Universev]

Two things stand out to me. Judging by the parameters doesn't sound like your tank is properly cycled for the bio load. Also, it is very important to know whether or not your water has a pH swing. You didn't say if you use a declorinator. Do you?

Yes! I use Seachem Prime each time I do my water change and Seachem stability. and I also used Seachem Florish and Seachem Florish Excel once or twice a week. As for my tank I used Aquatop CF300 3-Stage Canister Filter, 264 Gph. Half of the media inside the filter is from my 55g flowerhorn aquarium and its been there for a fews months. It there anything I can do to increase my water quality ?

[Universev]

0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and 0 nitrates is not good on a 7 week old cycle. Have you had ammonia or nitrite at all? Those numbers indicate your test kit is not working properly or that your filter is not cycled properly.
Did you quarantine your discus b4 adding them in with the cardinals?
Others will chime in who have more discus experience than me, but in the meantime increase your WC's to as much as you can handle (75%+/day) and add 1 tbsp of salt per 10 gallons with each change.

I tested my aquarium with Master Test Kit. Before I added my cardinal in to aquarium I had ammonia spike at 1.0ppm in my aquarium and after a few days I tested it again the ammonia become 0 so i decided to added cardinal in my aquarium and the cardinal seem pretty healthy and they ate a lot. I have to admitted that I forgot to test for nitrite and nitrate for that day. But before I added the discus I tested the water and still got 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and 0-5 ppm nitrate. Since I got my discus I tested my water daily and still got everything to 0. I tested water on my 20g (Angelfish aquarium) and 10g (Shrimp aquarium) and they got different stats. I also did my water change daily 25%. I didn't quarantine my discus before adding them that why I used Seachem Paraguard daily for discus tank and I also used Seachem StressGuard daily since 3 of my discus got their fins damaged while transporting. Maybe because I bought my discus from 3 differents store.. and they aren't from the same origin ( 7 from Vietnamese, 2 from unknown and 1 from Malaysia). I should've quarantine them... I'm such a bad fish keeper.

[Universev]

Update I just feed my discus and I tested the water and I got 0.25 ammonia 0.50ppm nitrite and 5.0ppm nitrate and I’m doing 60% water changed. Normally I test my water after I do water change so I will test my water again after I did water change. Will update later

After the water change the ammonia and nitrite is pretty much 0 and still have nitrate btw 0~5ppm

[LizStreithorst]

That's good. A well cycled tank should have a nitrate reading of 5. Having the media from your flowerhorm tank 2 months ago and running for that time with just the cardinals would cause it to loose good bacteria.

You were right to remove the substrate and put the plants in pots. Were the fish stressed before you removed the substrate or did this start afterward?

What I would like you to do it fill a bucket with tap water, add a bubbler and after 12 hrs compare your pH reading from the water in the bucket to your tap water. A pH swing can cause trouble.

It is possible that you caused a cross contamination problem from the media from the flowerhorns or the cardinals but for now we will hope not.

[Universev]

That's good. A well cycled tank should have a nitrate reading of 5. Having the media from your flowerhorm tank 2 months ago and running for that time with just the cardinals would cause it to loose good bacteria.

You were right to remove the substrate and put the plants in pots. Were the fish stressed before you removed the substrate or did this start afterward?

What I would like you to do it fill a bucket with tap water, add a bubbler and after 12 hrs compare your pH reading from the water in the bucket to your tap water. A pH swing can cause trouble.

It is possible that you caused a cross contamination problem from the media from the flowerhorns or the cardinals but for now we will hope not.

Not really. Cuz only one of them seem to be sick. Now 2 of them seems to be sick after I took the gravel out but only one of them doesn't eat a lot. The rest of fishes eat alot.

I will fill a bucket of water and check the pH swing this evening when I will get home. And I will update about pH later tonight.


I'm not sure if this is a problem. But the 2 sick fishes seem to get bullied by some other discus. Well 3 of them seem to be pretty aggressive and they were the first to introduce to the aquarium too and they are slightly bigger than the others one too

Thank you so much!