Whirling issue with wild discus

[Amazon Sword]

Hello everyone, after a long while, I finally got around to having my big aquarium built for my wild discus (which also meant having to give some other fish away), but it seems I've stumbled on a rather difficult issue with whirling.

Problem

1. Please explain the problems with your fish. 3 days ago, I noticed one of my Heckels doing the "whirling thing", only once, for a short time. This occurred yesterday as well, only once, and today, I noticed it was almost like "chasing its tail" / having issues balancing for a few seconds.


2. Symptoms: Whirling and breathing a little bit faster than usually, stress bars very evident and the fish often swims up and down near the glass
3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. None.


Tank/Water

4. 9 Wild discus along with 20 Brochis splendens in a 210g aquarium


5. Water change regime: 30% twice a week

6. The aquarium has been running for almost a month now and it has a thin sand layer on the bottom.


7. Do you age your water? Yes and there is no pH swing.

8. No water conditioners used


9. Parameters and water source;


- temp 81 degrees F

- ph 7.0

- ammonia reading 0

- nitrite reading 0

- nitrate reading 10

R/O and waste R/O blend


10. The Brochis were introduced a few days after the discus, but had previously undergone several treatments for external and internal parasites as well as bacteria.
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11. The fish are fed various discus specific pellets as well as some spirulina ones.


The only thing I feel needs to be mentioned is that I added a bunch of catappa leaves almost a week ago, which made the pH drop to 7 from 7.5. I have a quarantine aquarium ready in case it's necessary, I'm just really not sure why this may be happening... Any help is more than appreciated

[captainandy]

Sounds like somethings causing eternal irritation of some sort. Like ick?
I would pull out those leaves, raise the temp to 86 and do a series of daily water changes. Big ones. Large volume of water so nothing wrong with doing changes with tap and conditioner for now. Do not worry about the pH for now.

[Amazon Sword]

Sounds like somethings causing eternal irritation of some sort. Like ick?
I would pull out those leaves, raise the temp to 86 and do a series of daily water changes. Big ones. Large volume of water so nothing wrong with doing changes with tap and conditioner for now. Do not worry about the pH for now.

Taking the leaves out is pretty easy, I'm just worried if it will actually make a difference as I did have this whirling issue with other fish in the past too, without any leaves, and it did end up being fatal... My tap pH here is pretty high, close to 9, doesn't that seem a bit too high?

[coralbandit]

Quick reading says Nitrofurazone [ API Furan 2] with Rid ich [ not the herbal crap] or ich med with malachite green and formalin is the recommended treatment.

I read several links and liked this one ; https://www.aquarium-pond-answers.co...erebralis.html
Being you have wild fish it is very possible if you kill the the parasite your issue may end like that ..It takes two host for the parasite to reproduce so once gone it should not come back . That is going under the belief is the fish came infected ?

[Moreetta]

I guess, there is no known cure for fish infected with the whirling disease parasite. Problem is when whirling disease was linked to severe impacts on wild trout.

[bluelagoon]

Quick reading says Nitrofurazone [ API Furan 2] with Rid ich [ not the herbal crap] or ich med with malachite green and formalin is the recommended treatment.

I read several links and liked this one ; https://www.aquarium-pond-answers.co...erebralis.html
Being you have wild fish it is very possible if you kill the the parasite your issue may end like that ..It takes two host for the parasite to reproduce so once gone it should not come back . That is going under the belief is the fish came infected ?

That is a very good read. Nice to learn something. I had that whirling disease that came in with 4 PB's from Vietnam. I knew it had something to do with the fishes nervous system. thanks for finding the problem.